Lead Atmospheric Scientist

About Sorcerer

Sorcerer is deploying a global network of persistent airborne sensors to fuel weather forecasting. Our high-altitude balloons collect 1000x more data than existing systems and are already used daily by meteorologists to track extreme weather across the US and Central America.

We are a well-funded early-stage Y Combinator backed startup based in San Francisco, CA. This is an opportunity to join at the very early stage, where you have an outsized impact across the company every day.

About the role

As the Lead Atmospheric Scientist at Sorcerer you’ll be expected to implement, troubleshoot, and deploy weather models utilizing a combination of AI/ML tooling and traditional NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction).

Initially, you’ll work closely with our CPO - later building a team of your own as we grow. If this sort of thing interests you we’d love to meet you!

Responsibilities

• Develop custom weather forecasting models

• End-to-end ownership including deployment on cloud infrastructure

• Collaborate closely with product team to develop innovative forecasting solutions

• Integrate with data assimilation systems to utilize balloon data and other observations

• Test and validate accuracy of weather models against real world data/observations

Required Experience

• 6+ years of Atmospheric Science experience

• Experience utilizing open source numeric weather models (WRF, MPAS, etc.)

• Experience operationalizing weather forecast models

• Experience with multi-dimensional data formats (Zarr, NetCDF, GRIB)

Ideal Candidates

• Have experience running both traditional NWP and ML models (GraphCast, Anemoi, etc.)

• Are comfortable with multi-disciplinary software engineering tooling (Git, Python, etc.)

• Have extensive experience managing cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure)

• Succeed with a high level of autonomy

• Aren’t afraid of scrappy, unconventional problem solving

Location

• This is an in-office role at our HQ in SOMA, San Francisco. For exceptional candidates we may consider remote work

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Generous paid time off

• Lunches daily, stocked office kitchen

Hiring exceptional people is our top priority, and we believe that exceptional people often have unusual backgrounds. Don’t be discouraged from applying if you don’t hit every qualification.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or other legally protected statuses.