Geospatial Analyst Climate Jobs in Raleigh, NC (NOW HIRING)

Contemporaries Inc. is supporting the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the recruitment of a Data Engineer to support environmental health and extreme weather research initiatives. This long-term contract opportunity offers remote work flexibility and will focus on developing and optimizing data infrastructure that supports scientific modeling, geospatial analytics, and computational research workflows.

Position Responsibilities:

• Design and implement optimized database structures to support scientific modeling workflows.
• Develop and maintain data schemas that ensure efficient querying and storage for large-scale scientific datasets.
• Develop and enhance PTB, CHORDS, and HEW geospatial database management capabilities.
• Work with geospatial datasets and data formats such as NetCDF, GeoTIFF, HDF5, and other environmental data standards.
• Build, document, and maintain end-to-end model pipelines using reproducibility and version control standards.
• Develop workflows utilizing R-based Targets and Python-based Snakemake frameworks.
• Implement automated testing frameworks and validation protocols to ensure pipeline reliability and consistency.
• Develop and test protocols for GPU-accelerated execution of R- and Python-based models.
• Create documentation and best practices related to GPU resource allocation and performance monitoring.
• Design, develop, and deploy Shiny applications for real-time data exploration and model output visualization.
• Ensure visualization applications are user-friendly, performant, and integrated with existing data infrastructure.
• Optimize R-based models through parallelization, vectorization, and algorithmic improvements.
• Configure and optimize workflows within high-performance computing environments, including job scheduling and resource management.
• Port performance-critical components to compiled languages such as C++ or Rust when appropriate.
• Collaborate with scientific teams to provide technical guidance and support environmental health research initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Statistics, Environmental Science, or a related field.
• Minimum of three (3) years of professional experience in data engineering, software engineering, computational research support, or a related field.
• Strong experience using the R programming language.
• Experience designing and maintaining database structures supporting large-scale datasets.
• Experience developing reproducible data pipelines and workflows.
• Experience with shell scripting, including Bash.
• Experience working in Linux-based computing environments.
• Experience with batch job scripting and scheduling tools such as SLURM.
• Experience developing interactive applications using Shiny.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and technical communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with geospatial or environmental datasets.
• Familiarity with geospatial data formats such as NetCDF, GeoTIFF, and HDF5.
• Experience using Python for workflow development or automation.
• Experience utilizing Snakemake, Targets, or similar pipeline orchestration frameworks.
• Experience supporting high-performance computing environments and GPU-enabled workflows.
• Experience optimizing code through parallelization, vectorization, or compiled languages such as C++ or Rust.
• Experience supporting environmental health, climate, or extreme weather research initiatives.
• Experience supporting NIH, HHS, or other federally funded scientific research programs.
• Experience contributing to technical documentation, scientific publications, or collaborative research efforts.