Job opportunity from Steven Mirsky at USDA ARS
The Precision Sustainable Agriculture team has a unique opportunity to advance real-time data acquisition, aggregation, analytics, and visualization for a national on-farm research network. This position would assist in developing cutting edge solutions for a nationally distributed network of public and private sector researchers and technologists. This position would start by working with Microsoft and USDA to integrate an IoT platform using Microsoft FarmBeats.
Official Position Summary: This position provides data science, back-end programming, and cloud support for the Precision Sustainable Agricultural team, USDA-ARS Data Innovations project, and the Agricultural Collaborative Outcome System (AgCROS) in partnership with Microsoft. Work consists of setting up components of a cloud architecture and data management pipeline for a distributed agricultural research team. Early work will include implementation and evaluation of the performance of the Microsoft FarmBeats platform as a scalable data- flow system for distributed networks of on-farm and on-station research that integrates multiple data inputs: direct measures of cash and cover crops (nutrients, biomass, yield), soils (sensor-based water content, EC, temperature measurements), and remote sensing (satellites, drones, and tractors).
Qualifications:
- Research Associate II + professional experience or B.S./B.A. degree + 5 years professional experience or Master’s degree + 2 years professional experience or PhD.
- Demonstrated ability to develop, debug, and revise software code in: Python, SQL, JavaScript, R, and Bash.
- Knowledge of hardware and software functions, network and operating system specifications, sufficient to develop new work methods, standards.
- Working knowledge of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server, and Linux.
- Working knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure, AWS).
- Competence in server administration and basic cybersecurity of distributed systems.
Salary: Based on experience; $65,000-$80,000
Location: Beltsville, Maryland
If you are interested in joining a fantastic team where agriculture, computer and data science can make a difference, please send a current resume, including references to: steven.mirsky@usda.gov.