Lead Research Engineer, Earth System Engineering Earth System Seattle, WA

Allenai; Mississippi; On-site; USD 200,000 - 302,000; Full time

Job summary

Allenai is looking for a Lead Research Engineer passionate about advancing geospatial intelligence through AI. This role involves tackling complex environmental challenges using large-scale planetary data. Join a rapidly growing team committed to leveraging AI for social good while enjoying a collaborative and innovative work environment.

Benefits

Generous paid vacation and sick leave

401k plan enrollment

Monthly fitness and wellbeing expenses

Qualifications

• Deeply experienced in foundational machine learning research.
• 5+ years experience working in machine learning.
• Experience building and scaling enterprise-grade ML/AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Advancing foundation models for geospatial intelligence.
• Building robust AI-first tools for actionable intelligence.
• Scaling model training and inference cost-effectively.

Skills

Geospatial AI

AI Research

Production Engineering

Python

C/C++

Education

Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ML/AI, or relevant technical field

Ph.D. in ML/AI or relevant technical field

Job description

Persons in these roles are expected to spend part of their time on-site in our Seattle offices and may occasionally work remotely from their home in the Greater Seattle area. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about Hybrid work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Ourbasesalary range is $200,800 - $301,320, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package.

Who You Are:

We are looking for a Lead Research Engineer who is passionate about pushing the boundaries of geospatial intelligence.

Who We Are:

We are building Earth-System (https://allenai.org/earth-system ), a new platform for large-scale planetary intelligence. Our mission is to tackle some of the world’s most complex environmental challenges—spanning climate change, sustainability, food security, humanitarian aid, and conservation—through AI. This platform will combine highly mixed-modality geospatial foundation models with the infrastructure to fine-tune and deploy them at scale. Our models analyze many different types of planetary data including satellite imagery, elevation maps, super-resolution weather forecasts, and other geospatial data sources for tasks such as ecosystem mapping, forest loss driver classification, carbon sequestration, wildfire risk mapping, and land cover change detection.

We face major open research and engineering challenges that require deep expertise and execution at scale:

• Research Challenges: Advancing foundation models for geospatial intelligence; addressing domain adaptation, low-resource settings, and high-impact decision-making; and minimizing the cost of annotating high-quality, large-scale geospatial datasets
• Engineering Challenges: Scaling model training and inference responsibly, efficiently, and cost-effectively—particularly for users with limited compute or edge deployments beyond WiFi range.
• Product & Deployment: Building robust AI-first tools that enable scientists, policymakers, and conservationists to generate actionable intelligence with minimal friction.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• Move fluidly between AI research and production engineering.
• Are deeply experienced in one or several areas in foundational machine learning research, and production-scale deployment.
• Operate with autonomy and a bias toward action, iterating quickly while ensuring long-term sustainability.
• Enjoy working in a highly collaborative environment.

You will join a rapidly growing team of scientists, engineers, and AI practitioners dedicated to leveraging AI for social good at scale. We operate across research, engineering, and product development, shipping models that are already industry leading in climate, geospatial intelligence, maritime AI, and other domains.

We are:

• Strong advocates of responsible and ethical AI.
• Committed to open-source and publishing our work.
• Focused on building AI that empowers users beyond the lab, making a tangible impact.

If you want to build scalable, high-impact AI that helps the world understand and respond to planetary change, we’d love to hear from you.

What You’ll Need:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, ML/AI, or relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience building, scaling, and optimizing enterprise-grade ML/AI systems
• Experience coding in Python, C/C++, or other similar languages
• Experience communicating AI research and development to audiences with different (non-technical) backgrounds
• 5+ years experience working in ML
• Expertise in geospatial AI, such as remote sensing and/or ML for geospatial trajectories

Preferred qualifications:

• Ph.D., research background in ML/AI in CS or AI, or relevant technical field
• Experience in large-scale cloud infrastructure
• Experience with large scale machine learning infrastructure deployments

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.

A Little More About Ai2:

Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world’s biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

In addition to Ai2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind.
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly– chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do.

Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related Know Your Rights compliance poster and the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision by clicking on their corresponding links.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at [e-mail] .

• Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance, basic accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and an employee assistance program.
• Team members are able to enroll in our voluntary life insurance program, our voluntary accidental death and dismemberment program, our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans.
• Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan.
• Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses.
• Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year.
• Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long-term incentive plan.

Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at will relationship.

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