This is a hybrid position which requires 8 days/month in our Washington DC office. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission as WRI is unable to sponsor any visa work sponsorship for this position.
About the Program:
The Data Lab is WRIโs core data innovation and delivery unit. We are a team of over 35 engineers, product managers, and data scientists with deep experience setting data strategy, doing quantitative research, and building data tools and products. We work across WRIโs programs, centres, and international offices to use advances in data and technology to help our community improve lives, protect nature, and ensure just transitions. Data of all kinds sits at the heart of how WRI achieves impact in the world, and our world-class research is used by governments, policymakers, NGOs and local communities around the world to improve lives, protect nature, and ensure just transitions. The Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities (https://www.wri.org/cities) builds on WRIโs global and local experience in urban planning and mobility and uses proven solutions and action-oriented tools to make the fast-growing urban environment more resilient to new challenges. The Cities Data team provides cities and local governments with data and tools to support data driven urban planning, addressing different themes: climate risk modeling, population exposure and vulnerability mapping, accessibility to urban services, urban growth, urban heat modeling.
Job Highlight:
Reporting to the Head of Engineering, you will collaborate with data scientists and analysts in the Cities Data team to develop API services, data pipelines, and other software to conduct geospatial analysis, produce and maintain global and city-level data layers, generate new spatial and temporal urban indicators, and support the development and deployment of interactive dashboards and other visualizations. You will be supported by the Data Lab Engineering Team and Cities Data and Tools team.
What will you do:
Develop Geospatial Tools, Libraries, and Infrastructure (75%):
- Build reusable tools and libraries to automate and streamline common data workflows
- Maintain existing codebases and help drive technology choices
- Develop APIs to manage and serve diverse geospatial datasets and socio-economic indicators
- Architect and manage cloud infrastructure in collaboration with Data Lab DevOps
- Build data pipelines for processing of geospatial data using CI/CD practices and preparation for use by data scientists and data products.
Support Data Scientists Workflows and Partners (25%):
- Work with data scientists to automate, optimize and scale geospatial data processing and storage for research products and dashboards
- Promote good coding practices across data scientists and engineers and contribute to code reviews
- Be a technical contact for scientists, product managers and users
What will you need:
- Education: You have completed a bachelorโs degree in a related field
- Experience: You have minimum of 5 year of full-time relevant work experience in programming using Python or other relevant languages
- Familiarity with GIS concepts like remote sensing, projections, rasters/vectors and spatial analysis
- Familiarity with numerical processing libraries like numpy, scipy and xarray
- Experience with cloud compute and storage services, preferably on AWS
- Ability to quickly learn new technologies, architectures, and best practices
- Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work with teams of individuals and colleagues
- Tireless problem-solver; motivated to contribute to solving todayโs most pressing environmental and/or international development problems
- Preferred: Familiarity with distributed processing tools like Dask or Spark
- Preferred: Familiarity with GIS tools like GDAL, rasterio, geopandas, Google Earth Engine and cloud native geospatial data formats (Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF, GeoParquet, STAC...)
- Experience working with distributed and international team members
- Languages: Proficiency in spoken and written English
- Requirements: Existing work authorization is required where this position. WRI is unable to authorize visa work authorization
Potential Salary: Salary range is:
US: 101,000 to 108,000 USD.
UK: 44,000 to 53,000 GBP
Europe: 57,000 to 68,000 GBP
Salary is commensurate with experience and other compensable factors. WRI offers a competitive remuneration and benefits package.
How to Apply: Please submit a resume with cover letter by the date of 09 April 2024. We are unable to consider your application without a cover letter.
You must apply through the WRI Careers portal to be considered.