Research Software Engineer

Antarctica and Greenland are changing rapidly under a warming climate, but we don’t know nearly enough about how they’ll respond to climate change in the next 10 years, let alone the next 100.

We’re aiming to dramatically reduce uncertainty in future sea level rise in order to give policy makers, planners, and coastal communities reliable, replicable, and trustworthy guidance on what to expect in the future.

We’re looking for a founding research software engineer who will take ownership of our software architecture and is excited to lead our in-house efforts as well as working directly with academic partners.

You’ll have the opportunity to shape how we understand our world. You will define best practices for how we build and validate models, how we share data, and how we communicate our work. If building new ways of understanding our planet without the traditional constraints sounds like your dream, you might be a good fit for us.

Key responsibilities

You will perform a mix of working on the development of in-house model analysis, visualization, and evaluation tools and working directly with research partners to build data analysis pipelines. As an engineer here, you’ll also be asked to publicly share your learnings and encouraged to participate in the scientific community. Every line of code you write will be made for sharing and designed with re-use in mind. Your key responsibilities will include:

• Create web-based visualization tools to understand and explain multi-dimensional datasets

• Architect and build software tools to process and analyze ice sheet model outputs and satellite, airborne, and in-situ sensor data

• Work directly with our academic partners to solve computational and software engineering bottlenecks

• Replicate critical research and share findings with the scientific community

About you

You’ll need to have:

• 2+ years of experience as a software engineer, data scientist, or in a similar role

• Strong programming skills in Python, including scientific Python libraries such as numpy, scipy, and xarray

• Experience building interactive web-based data visualizations for complex data

• Experience with building portable, reproducible data processing workflows

• A deep interest in better understanding our planet’s natural systems

You’ll also likely have some (but not all) of these qualifications. None of these are hard requirements and we don’t expect any one candidate to have them all. If in doubt, please apply!

• PhD in computer science, engineering, statistics, or earth sciences

• A record of contributing to or leading open-source projects

• A background in statistics or experience building Bayesian models

• Experience working with high-performance computing, either with on-premises clusters or in the cloud

• Experience working with large-scale computational models and/or remote sensing datasets

• Experience translating scientific work for general audiences

We’re a small team and care deeply about our team culture. We want you to succeed in your career and feel supported to grow. You could be titled as an engineer, data scientist, or a scientist, depending on your preference and how you want to grow your career. In reality, you’ll be a little bit of all three. No matter your background, though, we expect everyone to do the things that most need doing.

Location & Start Date:

This is an in-person job in Emeryville, CA at least 3 days a week. Occasional travel to conferences or for partner visits may be required.

We’re looking for someone to join our team as soon as possible.

Benefits & salary

Your starting salary range is $150,000 to $200,000, depending on experience. There may be flexibility in salary for exceptional candidates with significant experience.

Our benefits include:

• Health Insurance (inc. medical, dental, and vision) for employee and dependents

• Family leave (up to 12 weeks)

• A flexible time off policy

• 403(b) plan

This is a full-time role.

Diversity & inclusion

We believe diversity enriches our team and so strive to hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences.

We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About Astera

Astera is a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation on a mission to help lead humanity’s transition to a scientifically advanced, abundant future. In service of this mission, we run residencies and other internal programming to support the creation of public goods for science and technology, such as open, non-proprietary infrastructure, tools, datasets, and standards.

We believe an abundant future for all is possible – but not inevitable. To bring it about, we must rebuild the machinery of science to be more efficient, scalable, and open. We need visionary leaders who are compelled by the challenge of leveraging all the resources at our disposal to drive transformative change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated.

This job posting is part of an existing residency project.