Physical Scientist (HPC/Weather Modeling)

Location: Hybrid in College Park, MD, USA. Candidates must be U.S. citizens or Green Card holders.

Salary: $70,000–$110,000 per year.

Company

hirify.global develops and supports scientific software and Earth system modeling solutions.

What you will do

• Integrate the MPAS dynamical core into the UFS Weather Model and update related components.
• Develop NUOPC caps, coupling infrastructure, coupled field exchanges, component interactions, and mediator configurations.
• Build modular frameworks for standalone component testing and maintain portable builds, unit tests, and regression workflows across scientific HPC platforms.
• Profile parallel code at scale, identify I/O, memory, and load-balancing bottlenecks, and evaluate scalability improvements, refactoring, compression, or third-party implementations.
• Build, debug, and maintain CI workflows; use Git-based development, agile practices, and modern debugging tools.
• Integrate external components such as CICE and CDEPS, coordinate with UFS stakeholders and application teams, review multi-team contributions, and provide technical mentoring and documentation.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship or Green Card status is required.
• Background in meteorology/NWP, physical sciences, mathematics, computer science, software engineering, scientific computing, or a closely related field, with demonstrated numerical modeling or related scientific computing experience.
• Experience with or strong foundational understanding of Earth system or other dynamical modeling; MPAS or other dynamical-core experience is preferred in the qualification wording.
• Proficiency in Fortran, including F95+ and object-oriented concepts, and Python, including OOP and automation.
• Proficiency in Bash and scientific software development in Linux or similar environments.
• Working knowledge of modular design, unit testing, standalone component testing frameworks, and modern software engineering practices.
• Experience developing, configuring, and running parallel Earth system or similar models on HPC systems, including SLURM or PBS job schedulers.
• Experience with CMake-based build systems and CTest; CMake development experience is strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with Git-based version control and code management, including branching, forking, pull or merge requests, and issue or project tracking.
• Experience using AI tools for code and documentation development, or willingness to learn.
• Good verbal and written communication skills in English.
• Ability to collaborate professionally with physical scientists, software engineers, and inter-agency partner teams; independently prioritize and implement bug fixes and features; provide technical mentorship; and maintain user-facing developer documentation.

Nice to have

• Experience with coupled Earth system model frameworks such as ESMF, NUOPC, mediators, component interactions, and individual atmosphere, ocean, wave, or ice components.
• GPU or other heterogeneous computing experience or familiarity.
• C++ experience.
• Experience in Agile/Scrum development environments.
• Experience developing, debugging, and maintaining CI and other automated workflows.
• Familiarity with package managers such as Spack and containerization technologies such as Apptainer/Singularity, Docker, or Podman.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work arrangement in College Park, Maryland.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and life insurance.
• Matching 401(k) contribution.
• Collaboration with a diverse, customer-focused group of scientists, engineers, and inter-agency partners.