Estaidea: Statistician: Climatology, The Climate Corporation in San Francisco

The Climate Corporation’s mission is to help all the world’s people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change. To achieve our mission, we have built a unique technology platform to enable, for the first time, the real-time pricing and purchasing of customizable weather insurance. Managing over 200 TB of data, including 34 trillion weather simulation values, 150 billion soil type observations, and more than 3 million daily weather measurement values, we are one of the largest users of Amazon Web Services.

The Climate Corporation is focused on the enormous challenge and opportunity of protecting the trillion global agriculture industry from the financial impact of adverse weather – the cause of over 90 percent of crop loss – with fully automated weather insurance products. We are also building web and mobile applications that unleash the power of our unique data and analyses to help farmers manage their daily work with field-level weather and crop insights.

At The Climate Corporation, leaving a mark on the world is in our DNA; we want to make a lasting and meaningful real-world impact. We relish big problems because they are the most interesting to tackle, the most rewarding, and typically, the most valuable to solve. We also thrive on finding the possible in the impossible.

If you are the best at what you do, you like solving challenging problems, and you are looking for like-minded people dedicated to having a major impact on the world, we are eager to talk with you.

Statistician: Climatology

The Climate Corporation is looking for an experienced statistician to solve real-world problems in statistical climatology. We develop algorithms for statistical inference and simulation of climate from surface weather observations, weather radar, satellite remote sensing, GCMs, and more. Our mission is to provide detailed probabilistic estimates of climate variability and weather events that enable farmers around the world to protect and improve their farming operations.

Active areas of research

multivariate spatio-temporal stochastic processes

high-resolution statistical downscaling of model outputs

ensemble reconstruction of historical weather from multiple proxies

Bayesian hierarchical generative models

dimensionality reduction and feature selection

models of extreme values and rare events

statistical surrogate models/emulators

What you will do

Collaborate with a diverse, interdisciplinary team of software engineers and scientists in all aspects of your work.

Plan and execute original research projects in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.

Clearly communicate research findings through technical reports that are peer-reviewed by your colleagues.

Write beautiful, robust, testable, well-documented code.

Develop novel scalable statistical algorithms, and apply these algorithms to real-world data for market-facing products and services.

What you bring to the team

Ph.D. in statistics or an equivalent quantitative discipline.

Expertise in applied geo-statistical modeling and statistical machine learning.

Experience in statistical climatology is a requirement.

Strong command of a statistical software environment such as R, MATLAB, or equivalent.

Experience with a high-level programming language such as Python, Clojure, or Ruby is a plus.

Experience working with large real-world data sets; experience with Hadoop or Spark is a plus.

Strong drive to learn new topics and skills and to do whatever is necessary to develop innovative products that delight our customers.

Ability to happily communicate and collaborate as a member of a fast-paced, high-performing team.

What We Offer:

Our team is composed of top scientist and engineers. The environment is extremely engaging and fast-paced, with dozens of specialties coming together to provide the best possible products and experience for our customers.

Competitive salary, excellent benefits, and some of the best perks in the industry, including:

We let you explore personally compelling topics by occasionally taking time to work on independent research projects
We provide lunch, dinner and a large assortment of snacks and drinks throughout the day.
Company sponsored outings, including go-kart races, curling, holiday yacht parties, sporting events, etc.
We actively participate in workshops and scientific conferences such as NIPS, AGU and AMS. We collaborate with research facilities and academic organizations. We also have an in-house seminar series given by both guest lecturers and also our own scientists.
Our engineers and scientists are encouraged to visit agents and farmers to see first-hand how our products are being used and get feedback.
Our researchers are encouraged to explore new methodologies and collaborate throughout the research process from brainstorming idea to pair-programming their solutions. Our research platform supports fast iterations and development allowing research to make it quickly into production. We communicate our research results with other scientists and people in the company.
Unique opportunity to make a real world impact – we are solving problems that have a massive impact on farmers lives and food security.
We strive for high quality in everything we do. From the precision of our agronomic models and the performance of our in-house databases, to the food we serve for lunch everyday; we are constantly refining and improving.