Machine Learning Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Maryland.

📋 Description

• The Machine Learning Engineer will execute their responsibilities to a high standard, functioning both autonomously and within a team.

• The primary duty is to contribute to the development, implementation, testing, and assessment of an AI-based Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (AI-RTMA) system to support NOAA’s National Blend of Models (NBM).

• The AI-RTMA system aims to produce high spatial and temporal resolution analyses of meteorological variables, minimizing biases in the NBM fields.

• Conduct a thorough review of cutting-edge AI-based data assimilation and end-to-end weather forecasting methodologies, systems, and frameworks.

• Share insights with EMC scientists and external collaborators to guide the creation of a scientifically sound and efficient AI-RTMA strategy.

• Work alongside NOAA’s NBM team and essential stakeholders to outline product specifications for AI-RTMA, including domain configuration, grid structure, output variables, spatial and temporal resolution, and data formats appropriate for operational evaluation and transition.

• Design, implement, and uphold robust data pipelines to facilitate AI-RTMA training, validation, testing, and assessment. This involves gathering, formatting, quality-controlling, and integrating various observational datasets (e.g., conventional observations, satellite, radar, and others), as well as preparing model inputs, targets, metadata, and training/validation splits.

• Develop, train, thoroughly test, and deploy a fully operational AI-RTMA system utilizing selected AI frameworks or architectures.

• Utilize cross-validation and other evaluation techniques to assess model performance and reliability during inference.

⛳️ Requirements

• Experience in developing, training, and deploying AI-based systems for geophysical applications.

• Proficiency with prevalent AI frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.

• Experience handling earth observation data, encompassing conventional observations, satellite, and radar data.

• Strong Python programming capabilities.

• Practical experience with High Performance Computers (HPCs) and GPUs.

• Demonstrated experience in a UNIX environment with advanced scripting languages.

• Strong communication abilities, both verbal and written, in English.

• Comprehensive understanding of data assimilation techniques (observation forward modeling, quality control, variational-based and/or ensemble methods).

• Solid foundation in the physical, statistical, and mathematical principles of geophysical modeling (atmospheric and/or environmental).

• Familiarity with cloud platforms and the use of IDEs for development.

• Experience with cloud-native data formats like Zarr and Parquet.

• Background in compiled programming languages.

• Comfort with agentic AI tools to enhance development speed.

• Experience running numerical models on HPC platforms utilizing parallelization frameworks and job scheduling systems.

• Understanding of coupled earth system models.

• Knowledge of modern software engineering practices (requirements gathering, design, prototyping, version control, integration, testing, and documentation).

• Prior experience in model testing, evaluation, or familiarity with verification principles.

🏝️ Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare coverage for the employee at no monthly cost.

• Healthcare benefits include medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage.

• Personal Time Off (PTO) Policy along with paid holidays.

• Highly competitive compensation plan regularly aligned with industry and location benchmarks.

• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching.

• Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) – we are all owners of the company!

• Flexible spending accounts.

• Employee assistance program (EAP).

• Short- and long-term disability insurance.

• Life and accident insurance.

• Tuition assistance/Training/Workforce improvement reimbursement annually.

• Spot bonuses awarded for outstanding performance.

• Annual Employee Recognition Awards with bonuses.

• Employee Referral Program.

• Free centralized, self-directed Learning Management System to learn at your own pace.

• Personalized career development plans for every employee.