Internal Research Fellow (PostDoc) in Operations Resilience

You will join a team responsible for strengthening the continuity, robustness, and recoverability of mission operations and the supporting services. Its goal is to ensure that space mission operations continue to function even when unexpected disruptions occur, which involves preparing for events such as technical failures, cyber events, environmental disruptions, and changes to infrastructure. This key objective brings together specialists from a range of operational areas and support functions at ESOC, as well as at tracking station facilities across the globe. You will collaborate with professionals working on flight operations, mission support services, information technology services, and facility operations, becoming part of a team that encourages curiosity, analytical thinking, and co‑creation with colleagues across the organisation. Your research will directly support the evolution of the centre’s operational concept, including planned infrastructure changes and service transformations. As an Internal Research Fellow, you will develop methods to analyse how mission operations respond to disruptions and how they can recover rapidly while maintaining continuous service. You will explore how different areas of the mission operations environment behave under stress, and how people, processes, and technical systems can be strengthened to improve resilience. The research project is expected to deliver clear and practical ways to measure how well mission operations can absorb disruptions, restore essential functions and maintain continuity. It will produce models that realistically simulate interruptions across technical, organisational and environmental domains, along with interactive tools that will help operational teams understand disruption propagation and evaluate recovery strategies. Through close collaboration with colleagues across a variety of operational areas, the project will identify vulnerabilities and dependencies and translate these insights into actionable recommendations for improving processes, roles, and technologies. This will provide a structured roadmap guiding future resilience improvements for mission operations and supporting services. Overall, your work will strengthen the organisation’s ability to deliver mission services under diverse, complex, and unpredictable conditions while helping protect operations from cyber attacks, technical failures, natural disasters, health crises, and geopolitical challenges thereby enhancing resilience posture and strengthening customer confidence.