Research Scientist (AI)

Location: Fully remote with occasional in-person meetings as needed.

Salary: $120,000–$150,000 annually, commensurate with experience.

Company

Arête Glacier Initiative is a newly launched nonprofit initiative fiscally sponsored by hirify.global, focused on understanding Antarctic ice-sheet risks and potential interventions to mitigate sea-level rise.

What you will do

• Develop methods to forecast glacier ice flow and its impact on sea-level rise with data scientists, engineers, and scientists.
• Design, adapt, and evaluate probabilistic machine learning and hybrid physics–ML models for ice-sheet flow, surface mass balance, and ocean–ice interactions.
• Develop and run large-scale numerical simulations of ice dynamics and scalable finite element modeling workflows.
• Process and curate satellite, radar sounding, ice-sheet model, and synthetic datasets for model training and validation.
• Integrate domain knowledge into model design, interpret outputs under physically realistic conditions, and analyze sensitivity to imperfect or incomplete data.
• Participate in regular research reviews and contribute to cross-functional, multidisciplinary collaboration.

Requirements

• PhD in atmospheric science, geophysics, applied mathematics, computer science, or a closely related field.
• 3+ years of postdoctoral or equivalent research experience applying machine learning or deep learning to weather forecasting or Earth system modeling.
• Proficiency in Python and PyTorch or JAX, with experience in high-performance or cloud computing and large-scale parallel processing.
• Experience with noisy geoscientific data, uncertainty propagation, error estimation, and remote sensing datasets including satellite radar, altimetry, and optical imagery.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly in written and spoken English and work independently in a remote, fast-paced environment.
• Availability for occasional in-person meetings is required.

Nice to have

• Experience with ISSM, PISM, MALI, physics-informed neural networks, neural operators, graph neural networks, or AI-accelerated finite element modeling.
• Knowledge of Bayesian inference, ensembles, sensitivity analysis, or adjoint methods.
• Experience with Zarr, xarray, and Dask for large gridded datasets.

Culture & Benefits

• Mission-driven nonprofit environment focused on Antarctic science, climate risk, and informed societal decisions.
• Flexible, fully remote work with occasional in-person meetings.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance with employee premiums fully covered and 85% of dependent premiums covered.
• HSA with $275 monthly employer contributions, FSA, wellness reimbursement, and disability and life insurance.
• 401(k) plan with 6% matching, 15 paid vacation days, 16 paid holidays, bereavement leave, and paid parental leave.

Hiring process

• Submit a resume and a cover letter outlining qualifications.
• Interviews are conducted virtually.