Remote Wildfire ML Scientist - Field-Ready Fire Modeling

Coulson Aviation; Thermal (CA); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

EmberWorks, the remote sensing arm of Coulson Aviation's R&D division, seeks a modeling expert to own its fire behavior modeling efforts. You will integrate data from airborne thermal observations and external sources, validate outputs, and shape modeling directions in a small, hands-on team of geospatial and platform engineers.

You will define training/inference compute needs, work with GPU-enabled infrastructure, and stay connected with academic fire science communities to inform

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of fire behavior modeling and underlying physics/mathematics.
• Hands-on experience building and training ML or data-driven models on spatiotemporal data.
• Strong remote sensing background with raster imagery experience.
• Proficiency in scientific geospatial stack (Python, xarray, GDAL, rasterio, PyTorch) and Git.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate existing fire behavior modeling approaches and select the right fit for our data.
• Build and implement models in an automated production pipeline using airborne thermal observations plus external fuel, weather, and terrain data.
• Research and develop new modeling approaches using empirical, physical, and machine learning methods as appropriate.
• Own model validation and interpretation: define what 'good' looks like, detect bad outputs, and determine whether the issue is in the model or upstream data.
• Define compute requirements for training and inference and coordinate with platform engineers to set up GPU and distributed computing resources.
• Maintain connections with the academic fire science community and help EmberWorks engage with research partners.

Skills

Fire behavior models

Machine learning

Remote sensing

Python

Xarray

GPU computing

Cloud compute

Data interpretation

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

GDAL

rasterio

PyTorch

Xarray

Git

Job description

EmberWorks, the remote sensing arm of Coulson Aviation's R&D division, seeks a modeling expert to own its fire behavior modeling efforts. You will integrate data from airborne thermal observations and external sources, validate outputs, and shape modeling directions in a small, hands-on team of geospatial and platform engineers.

You will define training/inference compute needs, work with GPU-enabled infrastructure, and stay connected with academic fire science communities to inform