Work With Us

Work study

We usually have openings each semester for current UC Berkeley students who are work-study qualified, as listed on the work-study website. In particular we are seeking students to operate the Green Bank and Parkes Telescopes. These positions pay $13 per hour, for up to 20 hours per week.

Logging in either from our comfortable remote observing facility in Campbell Hall, or from your own computer, you will be responsible for ensuring observations proceed successfully and for alerting other members of the team in case of problems. Observing sessions may be scheduled at any hour of the day or night with only 24 - 48 hours of notice. Observing assistants work as a team, reporting to our Observation Coordinator, to ensure that each slot is covered. Typically, sessions are uneventful, allowing the operator to spend around 30 - 60 minutes of a six hour slot actively configuring the observations, and the remainder of the time simply keeping an eye on things. So long as you remain alert for problems, light multitasking on other projects of your choice should be be possible during sessions where no major problems arise. Please submit your CV, and a cover letter summarizing your interest in and qualifications for this position.

Qualifications

Familiarity with Unix / Linux, including logging in to remote machines with ssh and vnc, shell commands, and basic shell scripting. Excellent written and oral communication skills, and the ability to work as part of a fast-paced team on time-critical tasks. Reliability, punctuality, and the ability to stay alert and undistracted are absolutely essential. You should be a quick learner, able to think on your feet, and with an excellent eye for detail. Basic familiarity with observational astronomy would be helpful but is not required (note that if you don’t already know what RA, Dec, J2000, pulsar, quasar and KIC 8462852 mean, you soon will!). You should be willing to work some nights, weekends, and holidays.

To apply, please visit the work-study website, or contact bsrc@berkeley.edu with any questions.

Undergrad Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP)

Unpaid research internships are available for current UC Berkeley students during the fall and spring semesters. Interns earn 1 unit of academic credit for each 3 hours of research work (limited to 4 units per term). The deadline for applications is usually on Tuesday of the second week of classes. Interns perform research under the supervision of Breakthrough Listen Faculty Liaison, Prof. Imke De Pater, typically also collaborating with one of the research scientists or engineers on the Breakthrough Listen team. Students may also apply through the BIDS URAP program.

The majority of our projects make heavy use of modern programming languages and tools. While we don’t expect applicants to be experts in all of these areas, familiarity and experience with one or more of Python / Jupyter, version control (e.g. git / github), database software (e.g. MySQL), visualization tools (e.g. Bokeh, D3, etc.), GPU programming, visualization, interface design, machine-learning environments, cloud computing, Unix / Linux scripting, full stack web development, and / or public outreach will make for a strong application. Prior astronomy research experience is not a prerequisite, although if you have knowledge or experience of positional astronomy, observational astronomy, radio astronomy, signal processing, and / or data reduction we would like to hear about that in your application. We'll also train you to operate some of the planet's largest radio telescopes (Green Bank and Parkes) - again, no prior experience is required, but we would like to hear about it if you have any. Please contact bsrc@berkeley.edu with any questions.

Paid internships

Students who have already interned with us for a minimum of one semester, or who have participated in our summer internship program, may apply for paid internships for the following semester, or alternatively may apply to continue research for class credit. Our paid summer internship program is also open to current UC Berkeley students - please see details below.

Current sophomore, junior, and senior (at the time of application) undergraduates studying at universities across the US (including UC Berkeley) are invited to apply for paid, 10-week summer internship positions. Applications open in December, with a deadline in February, for admission in June. Please see our summer internship page for details. These programs are open to US citizens and foreign nationals registered at undergraduate institutions in the US.

We currently can't take students from outside the US for summer internships due to the expense and staff time involved in preparing visa applications. However, we encourage students across the world to engage with our instructional materials; if you make progress on research projects involving our public data and code, we would love to hear from you.

We welcome involvement of graduate students in our research. Our unprecedented access to the world's most powerful telescopes, huge data archives, cutting-edge science program (including development of both classical and machine-learning algorithms to identify signals of interest), and the range of experience of experts on our team, make for exciting opportunities for discovery.

Current UC Berkeley graduate students in astronomy, EECS, and related fields are invited to contact us to discuss possible thesis topics. Graduate students outside UC Berkeley who wish to incorporate Breakthrough Listen data in their research should approach their faculty advisor at their home institution in the first instance, and then send us an email (bsrc@berkeley.edu) with a brief outline of their planned project to set up a call to discuss further.

Telescope time

Time on the Breakthrough Listen backend on the Green Bank Telescope is available on a shared-risk basis (through application for the general pool of time on GBT via the Time Allocation Committee), and we plan to make the Parkes backend available on a similar basis. Please see the GBT shared risk webpage for details and contact us with any questions

Visiting scholars

We have a lively program of academic visitors to the Breakthrough Listen Lab in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley. If you are interested in giving a research seminar on a topic relevant to SETI research, spending a few days here for a collaborative visit, or spending a sabbatical working with us, please drop us a line (bsrc@berkeley.edu) with an outline of your proposed talk or research topic. In some circumstances travel support may be available.

Industry

We face some challenging signal processing problems on petascale datasets as part of our work, and we are interested in drawing on the expertise of people working in industry with relevant experience. In particular, if you are an expert in machine learning, image processing, modulation classification, signal processing, or big data analytics, please take a look at our "how to find ET" document to get an idea of some of the challenges we are addressing, and feel free to drop us a line (bsrc@berkeley.edu).

If you are an experienced full stack web developer with a few hours per week to spare and are interested in volunteering to help us improve and expand our web presence, particularly through creative visualizations of our datasets (from a range of sources, including SQL, Redis, and HDF5), we'd like to chat.

If your company is a supplier of cloud computing, or hardware such as GPUs, hard drives, and memory chips, we make heavy use of these resources. We're a non-profit, academic group, and if you can cut us a favorable pricing deal, or even donate some hardware or cloud computing, please reach out.

Job opportunities

Postings for full-time positions at Berkeley SETI Research Center occasionally become available, and are posted on the UC Berkeley Jobs website. Our team consists of a mix of digital systems engineers, software developers and professional astrophysicists. If you have a PhD (or similar level of expert experience) in astrophysics or EECS, particularly GPU programming, machine learning, DSP, radio astronomy observations or instrumentation, or astrophysical transients, please drop us a line at bsrc@berkeley.edu with a brief summary of your qualifications and experience to be kept informed of future openings.