Technical Fellow Software

About the role

The NASA Technical Fellows Program recognizes Agency-wide technical excellence and leadership, with Fellows serving within the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC); advising the Office of the Chief Engineer, NASA programs and Mission Directorates. Also serves as a voting member on the NESC Review Board.

Fellows perform value-added testing, analysis, and assessments of NASA's high-risk projects to ensure safety and mission success.

What you will do

• Serves as the Agency's authoritative technical resource in software, applying advanced engineering theory and operational expertise, frequently leading teams and providing the technical foundation for evaluating and reducing mission risk.
• Provides Agency-wide technical leadership and collaboration in software, leading independent assessments and partnering with recognized researchers and engineers across NASA centers, academia, national laboratories, industry, and the Department of Defense to conduct and sponsor work that informs Software mission risk.
• Communicates and fosters software knowledge, publishing engineering findings through NASA channels, journals, seminars, NESC Academy courses, or domestic/international universities; serves as an invited presenter at conferences and promotes participation in engineering academies.
• Provides senior technical leadership for independent technical reviews, serving as the national/international expert in software.
• Establishes, leads, and stewards a Technical Discipline Team (TDT) of the Agency's foremost software experts, and augmented by external specialists-to support independent assessments and ensure discipline stewardship across NASA.
• Provides expert engineering support for the design, implementation, analysis, maintenance, verification, and validation of mission critical software and related computational hardware across flight, ground, science, operations, scheduling, and subsystem domains.
• Conducts cross-project studies to analyze anomalies, data, metrics, and trends, and develops reliable, secure, fault-tolerant software, algorithms, and tools that support spacecraft subsystems and mission performance.
• Advances software quality, security, standards, development environments, and knowledge management while applying advanced computing methods (AI, neural networks, expert systems, fuzzy logic) to enhance mission capabilities.
• Designs, analyze, integrate, and evaluate software systems across key subdisciplines - including but not limited to flight software, ground system software, science data processing software, operations, scheduling, and flight dynamics software, electrical ground support equipment software, simulators, emulators, test systems software, subsystem software and algorithms - to ensure safe, reliable, mission ready power capabilities.
• Leads Agency-wide Software discipline stewardship activities, including technical workshops, knowledge-sharing forums, identification and cataloging of critical skills and facilities, assessment of emerging technical challenges, and periodic reporting of discipline health, capability, and risk to Agency leadership.

Education

This position has a positive education requirement. To be eligible, you must clearly state in your resume the following: degree, major and/or minor, and college/university. A college or university degree generally must be from an accredited (or pre-accredited) college or university recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

For a list of schools which meet these criteria, please refer to Department of Education Accreditation page. An official transcript will be required if you are selected. A bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with major study in engineering, physical science, mathematics, life sciences, computer science, or other field of science.

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR FOREIGN EDUCATION: If you are using education completed in foreign colleges or universities to meet the qualification requirements, you must show that the education credentials have been evaluated by a private organization that specializes in interpretation of foreign education programs.

These education credentials must be deemed equivalent to that gained in an accredited U.S. education program; or full credit has been given for the courses at a U.S. accredited college or university. For further information, click here.

How you will be evaluated

All qualifications requirements must be met by the closing date of the announcement. Applicants that meet minimum eligibility requirements outlined in the Qualifications and Education (if applicable) sections of the vacancy announcement will be referred to an executive panel for further evaluation. The panel reviews and evaluates the candidate's resume against each SL criterion.

Candidates may receive an interview for further evaluation and/or be asked to provide a list of references. The panel will make a recommendation to the appropriate approving authority. These competencies will be assessed using technical assessments.

They may also be evaluated during a structured interview: Creativity and Innovation Developing Others Leadership Oral Communication Partnering Problem Solving Software Engineering Teamwork Technical Competence Technical Management Technical Work and Team Management

Documents you must provide

• You must provide a complete application package.
• If you do not provide all required information, you will not be considered for this position.
• Only provide the following: RESUME: All applicants are required to submit a resume limited to two (2) pages (recommend PDF file) showing all relevant experience (start/end dates stated in month/year, description of duties), applicable education at a minimum, and your contact information.
• Your 2-page resume should also address the SL Evaluation Criteria.
• For current or previous Federal employees, it should also include the Pay Plan, Series and Grade for each work experience entry.
• Please see this guidance: What to include in your resume.
• Note: if any of the following types of information are included on your resume, you may be disqualified: Classified or government sensitive information.
• Social Security Number (SSN) Photos of yourself Personal information, such as age, gender, religious affiliation, etc. Encrypted and digitally signed documents.
• If your resume contains any of the above information, you must redact that information prior to the submission of your application.
• VACANCY QUESTION/ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES: Responses are automatically submitted through USAJOBS when you apply to this vacancy.You may be asked to provide additional documentation to support your eligibility and the information provided in your application package.
• For example, we may request transcripts, SF-50s, etc. Therefore, we encourage you to have these documents prepared and ready when requested.
• If you fail to provide the required documents within the stated time period, we may withdraw a job offer and/or remove you from further consideration.

What to expect next

Once your online application is submitted you will receive a confirmation notification email. Your application will be evaluated by the Human Resources Office to determine your eligibility for the position. After the evaluation is complete, you will receive another notification regarding the status of your application.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact NASA Executive Staffing at ***.

Additional information

NASA may discuss and consider candidate duty station location after selection, which means that the duties can be performed at any NASA location. The selected candidate will need to relocate and report to an on-site NASA location or duty station, which may be different from where he/she currently resides.