Hydrologic Modeler (Experienced Hire)

Company & Mission Overview:

First Street is a research and technology company working to connect climate change to financial risk. First Street uses transparent, peer-reviewed methodologies to calculate the past, present, and future climate risk for every property in the United States. The data we create is made available in bulk format, API and through our Risk Factor product (riskfactor.com) for citizens, industry, and government.

Our data quantifies the impact of a warming planet at a property level, empowering governments to make smart regulation, businesses to avoid bad investments, and everyday Americans to protect their most valuable investment. We started seven years ago by working with the world’s leading climate scientists to create groundbreaking, climate-adjusted models and haven’t stopped.

Our data and tools are relied on every day by:

Government agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Treasury to Fannie Mae

Financial institutions like Bank of America and Truist

States like South Carolina and Illinois

The millions of daily users on Redfin, Realtor.com, Allstate, and more.

And we’re just getting started. We believe that our work needs to match the pace and scope of the climate problem so we are investing tens of millions of dollars into our science, data, people, and products in order to increase our velocity and impact.

Come join us and use your talents to create solutions to address the problem.

Team & Role Overview:

We are looking for a Climate Scientist with a specialization in flood modeling to join our team. This person will need to have several years of postdoctoral professional experience and the ability to lead projects and potentially people.

What you’ll do:

Lead development and operation of the First Street Flood Model to create flood hazard estimates at national scales.

Introduce innovative methods to improve the flood model performance and assess flood risk at a high spatial resolution (1-3m horizontal).

Manage model production, quality control and ongoing evaluation/validation efforts.

Identify and develop new data inputs and methodological improvements for inclusion into the First Street Flood Model.

Manage model and data processing workflows both on the commercial cloud and on local clusters.

What you’ll need:

Ph.D. in a combination of hydraulics and hydrology with equivalent experience in flood modeling

Strong foundation in understanding and modeling hydraulic processes (e.g., channel routing and inundation process dynamics).

Expertise in various flood modeling platforms, especially 1D and 2D inundation models (e.g., LIS-FLOOD or CA2D) or similar modeling framework.

Expertise in fluvial and/or pluvial flooding, and familiarity with coastal flooding.

Expertise with big data analysis, large-capacity processing workflows, and cloud computing.

Expertise in probability and statistics related to flood frequency analysis.

Expertise using both compiled and scripted languages (e.g., Matlab, Python, UNIX shell, C++, Fortran, and/or SQL) and GIS software (e.g., QGIS and ArcGIS) to efficiently analyze outputs.

Ability to work in a fast-paced team environment.

What will make you stand out:

Experience authoring peer-reviewed scientific publications in areas related to flood modeling.

Previous experience managing people.

Skill/Experience calibrating hydraulic and hydrologic models and quantitatively evaluating their performance.

Skill/Experience developing a variety of satellite-based flood inundation maps for validation and calibration.

Skill/Experience in groundwater modeling (e.g., MODFLOW).

How we work:

Passion: We are driven by our shared goal to fight climate change

Inclusion: We believe the best decisions consider many points of view

Impact: We only focus on things that move the needle

Urgency: We move quickly because the world depends on it

Integrity: We use open science and operate transparently

Positivity: We are optimistic and enthusiastic in all that we do

What we offer:

Competitive salary ranges commensurate with experience

Ownership interest in the company via Employee Stock Option Plan

Hybrid Schedule with in-office work days on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday

Working time is flexible; core hours are 10:00am – 4:00pm

15 vacation days along with 13 company holidays and 10 sick days

Health benefits covered at 100% for employee or a significant contribution for family plans

Vision and dental benefits with partial employee contribution

12 weeks of paid parental leave

Access to One Medical, Teledoc, HealthAdvocate, Kindbody, and Talkspace

Company 401k program

Commuter benefits

Tech startup environment

Weekly team meals and an office stocked with coffee and snacks

Working on the world’s biggest issue with other passionate professionals

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.