Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire Risk & Geospatial ML

Overstory; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Flexible, autonomous environment

Home office stipend

Ongoing education budgets

Job summary

Overstory is seeking a Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire, to lead the scientific foundation of our Fuel Detection Model, translating satellite and environmental data into wildfire risk insights. You will set accuracy, design validation methods, and ensure fire science grounding across modeling decisions.

Join a multidisciplinary team of ML engineers and product professionals, advancing production-ready solutions that support utilities in mitigating catastrophic wildfires and protecting ecosystems.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of applied research or data science in wildfire-related fields.
• Expertise with remote sensing and geospatial analysis on satellite data.
• Strong ML skills in Python with GeoPandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch, or XGBoost.
• Proven ability to design validation studies and evaluation frameworks.
• Excellent communication translating complex science to diverse audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead research on estimating vegetation structure, fuel conditions, and wildfire risk from satellite data.
• Design validation methods, ground-truth strategies, and uncertainty quantification with real-world impact.
• Prototype and refine ML models; collaborate with ML engineers for production.
• Integrate fire science with data-driven methods.
• Define experiments standards for reproducibility and interpretability.
• Communicate findings to engineers, product teams, customers, and wildfire community.
• Mentor ML engineers on scientific methodology and domain reasoning.

Skills

8+ years wildfire science research

Remote sensing & geospatial analysis

Python & ML libraries

GeoPandas

scikit-learn

PyTorch

XGBoost

Model validation & evaluation design

Scientific communication

Fire behavior knowledge (optional)

GCP/Vertex AI familiarity

Remote collaboration in distributed 팀

Tools

Geospatial tooling

Job description

Overstory is seeking a Staff Data Scientist, Wildfire, to lead the scientific foundation of our Fuel Detection Model, translating satellite and environmental data into wildfire risk insights. You will set accuracy, design validation methods, and ensure fire science grounding across modeling decisions.

Join a multidisciplinary team of ML engineers and product professionals, advancing production-ready solutions that support utilities in mitigating catastrophic wildfires and protecting ecosystems.