Senior Environmental Applications Developer

RTI International is an independent, scientific research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Our vision is to address the world's most critical problems with technical and science-based solutions in pursuit of a better future. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and multidisciplinary approach-one that integrates expertise across social, statistical, data, and laboratory sciences, engineering, and other technical disciplines to solve the world's most challenging problems.

We believe in the promise of science and technical solutions, and we push ourselves every day to deliver on that promise for the good of people, communities, and businesses in the US and around the world. If you are looking for the opportunity to make a real difference, RTI is the place for you.

RTI International's Center for Water Resources (CWR) delivers cutting-edge services across the spectrum of water resources including river forecasting, water supply modeling, and hydrologic risk analysis. These projects require expertise in software development, data management, data analysis, hydrologic, hydraulic, and water quality modeling, assessment of impacts on the natural and built environment, and analysis of economic and social outcomes. We are a dynamic team that collaboratively and creatively develops solutions to solve the world's most pressing water resources problems. Our aim is to put the data in the hands of stakeholders through creation of a variety of web and desktop tools based on rigorous hydrological modeling and analysis.

CWR is currently increasing the number of software applications it develops, operates, and maintains in support of the water sector. These include scalable web applications as well as more traditional systems that are hosted on our client's on-premise infrastructure and cloud infrastructure, as well as our own cloud resources, including:

• Decision support systems
• Scalable environmental modeling platforms
• Data analytics platforms
• Software libraries and desktop applications

We have an immediate opportunity for a Senior Environmental Applications Developer (Full Stack Developer with a focus on Cloud Integration) to join our small but growing group of core software developers. The successful candidate will work with multidisciplinary teams including software developers, subject matter experts and non-technical staff to support, operate, maintain, and enhance existing in-house software as well as contribute to the development of new software products to support CWR projects and initiatives.

To be considered for this position you must provide a resume and a non-AI-generated cover letter showing that you understand the type of work we do and highlighting how your experience aligns with that work.

This position may be right for you if you:

• Exhibit passion for technology, enjoy working on several projects at the same time, and are energized by building, understanding, maintaining, and troubleshooting complex systems.
• Want to continually learn and apply new technologies and techniques.
• Have extensive experience designing and building applications in a cloud computing environment including infrastructure as code.
• Have a strong understanding of software management lifecycle using version control, continuous integration/continuous deployment, and project tracking tools (git, GitHub, Actions) and automated testing.
• Have experience designing and building scalable web applications with a microservice architecture including web services, databases, and frontend components.
• Have extensive experience using Python for a wide range of tasks including building ETL pipelines, web service development, data wrangling, data visualization, and writing and packaging scientific software.
• Are proactive and communicate effectively with internal and external stakeholders with varying degrees of technical knowledge.

This position can be fully remote within the United States, or based in our headquarters location in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or in an environmental or engineering discipline with emphasis on software development and at least 5 years of professional experience in information technology or software development; OR a Master's degree in the same fields with at least 3 years of professional experience.

• The successful candidate will also be able to demonstrate real-world experience in the following items (specific technologies currently used by the team are shown in parenthesis for reference but are not all required):

  • Extensive experience working with Unix/Linux operating systems and comfortable with command line tools.
  • Experience using cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, including setting up Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.). Certification is a plus.
  • Containerization, deployment, and administration of application components (web services, models-as-a-service) to support cloud-deployment and scalable computing (Garden, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure).
  • Building ETL pipelines to ingest and process scientific data from external sources (Python, Prefect).
  • Relational database and data warehouse design and administration to support the management of scientific data including timeseries data, gridded environmental data, and numeric model configuration data (PostgreSQL, PostGIS, SQLite, Iceberg)
  • Design and development of REST and/or GraphQL web-services to support modeling, data collection and data visualization objectives (Python, Django, Go, Hasura).
  • Development of single-page web applications to support the collection, dissemination, and visualization of scientific data to end users (JavaScript, React, Plotly, Leaflet, Material-UI).
  • Experience working with project owners and subject matter experts to translate their needs in plain language to specific tasks/features that can be developed.

• To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H-1B visa status, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Have a scientific or engineering background in water resources principles including hydrology, hydraulics, water resources management, floodplain mapping, water quality, and the related data.
• Demonstrated understanding of geospatial and temporal environmental data processing (e.g., streamflow, precipitation, temperature, etc.)
• Have experience with data lake/warehouse design and cloud-native file storage formats such as Apache Parquet)

For San Francisco, CA USA Job Postings Only: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Further information is available here.

RTI accepts applications to our job openings from candidates with criminal histories or conviction records in accordance with all applicable laws, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

For Applicants in Massachusetts Only: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

The anticipated pay range for this role is listed below. Our pay ranges represent national averages and may vary by location as a geographic differential may be applied to some locations within the United States. RTI considers multiple factors when making an offer including, for example: established salary range, internal budget, business needs, and education and years of work experience possessed by the applicant. Further, salary is merely one element to our offer.

At RTI, we demonstrate our commitment to rewarding individual and team achievement through a total rewards package. This package includes (among other things) a competitive base salary, a generous paid time off policy, merit based annual increases, bonus opportunities and a robust recognition program. Other benefits include a competitive range of insurance plans (including health, dental, life, and short-term and long-term disability), access to a retirement savings program such as a 401(k) plan, paid parental leave for all parents, financial assistance with adoption expenses or infertility treatments, financial reimbursement for education and developmental opportunities, an employee assistance program, and numerous other offerings to support a healthy work-life balance.