Wildland Fire Risk Scientist: Building & WUI Insights

KBR Careers; Sioux Falls (SD); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401K plan with company match

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Flexible spending account

Paid time off

Job summary

KBR Careers seeks a Wildland Fire Risk Scientist to support USGS wildfire risk research focusing on buildings, WUI, and critical infrastructure. The role requires advanced GIS, remote sensing, scripting, and statistical analysis skills, with a strong emphasis on publishing scientific work.

The candidate will develop data sets, prototypes, and models at national scales, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams and communicating findings through reports and journal articles.

Qualifications

• PhD or advanced degree in ecology, landscape ecology, forestry, fire science or related field.
• 3–5 years of experience in fire ecology and plant community dynamics across the landscape.
• Experience with image processing and GIS software (ERDAS, ArcGIS, ArcPro, QGIS).
• Strong interpersonal communication, technical writing, presentations, and MS Office proficiency.

Responsibilities

• Forward research in wildfire exposure and risk to buildings and the wildland-urban interface to inform DOI and USWFS risk assessments and mitigation strategies.
• Advance methods to predict wildfire exposure and damage to buildings at national or larger scales using simulation models and deep and machine learning.
• Lead development and publication of journal articles related to this research.
• Develop, maintain, and expand data sets that quantify building losses caused by wildfires annually.
• Develop prototypes and identify data sources for non-building assets such as communication, energy, hydrological, or transportation infrastructure impacted by wildfires.
• Develop, update, and analyze global- and national-scale datasets mapping Wildland Urban Interface using building footprints, census data, land cover, and fire occurrence data.

Skills

Python

R

Geospatial analysis

GIS software

Scientific writing

Team collaboration

Education

PhD or advanced degree in ecology / landscape ecology / forestry / fire science

Tools

ERDAS

ArcGIS

ArcPro

QGIS

Kiro

Job description

KBR Careers seeks a Wildland Fire Risk Scientist to support USGS wildfire risk research focusing on buildings, WUI, and critical infrastructure. The role requires advanced GIS, remote sensing, scripting, and statistical analysis skills, with a strong emphasis on publishing scientific work.

The candidate will develop data sets, prototypes, and models at national scales, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams and communicating findings through reports and journal articles.