Flexible Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire Risk & Remote Sensing Lead

Overstory; Netherlands; Remote; EUR 125,000 - 178,000; Full time

Job summary

Overstory seeks a Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire to lead the scientific foundation of our Fuel Detection Model. You’ll translate satellite and environmental data into wildfire risk insights, framing research and validation methods grounded in fire science and remote sensing principles.

You’ll work with ML engineers and a product team to define model accuracy, productionize methods, and communicate findings across technical and non-technical audiences globally.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of applied research or data science in wildfire or related fields.
• Expertise in remote sensing and geospatial analysis.
• Strong Python ML skills with GeoPandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch or XGBoost.
• Experience designing validation studies for environmental models.
• Clear communication of complex science to technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead research on estimating vegetation structure, fuel, and wildfire risk from satellite and LiDAR data.
• Design rigorous validation, ground-truth, uncertainty quantification and error analysis.
• Prototype and refine ML models, then partner with ML engineers for production systems.
• Integrate fire science with data-driven modeling approaches.
• Set standards for reproducibility and model interpretability across the org.
• Communicate findings to engineers, product teams, customers and wildfire community.
• Mentor ML engineers in scientific methodology and domain reasoning.

Skills

Remote sensing

Geospatial analysis

Statistical modeling

Communication skills

Python

Education

PhD or MS in a quantitative field

Tools

GeoPandas

scikit-learn

PyTorch

XGBoost

Job description

Overstory seeks a Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire to lead the scientific foundation of our Fuel Detection Model. You’ll translate satellite and environmental data into wildfire risk insights, framing research and validation methods grounded in fire science and remote sensing principles.

You’ll work with ML engineers and a product team to define model accuracy, productionize methods, and communicate findings across technical and non-technical audiences globally.