What You'll DoThe Early Career Water Resources / Environmental Engineer or Scientist will support development, implementation, testing, and maintenance of operational river forecast systems, with an emphasis on Delft-FEWS (Flood Early Warning System) configuration and related data ingestion and modeling workflows. The position may also support hydrologic modeling, reservoir modeling, forecast evaluation, data processing, visualization, documentation, and client-facing technical support.
This role is well suited for a motivated early-career professional who is interested in applied water resources, enjoys learning new technical tools, and wants to contribute to systems that support real-time water management decisions. The candidate should be familiar with the underlying concepts of the tools used by the team. Strong candidates will bring curiosity, attention to detail, technical problem-solving skills, and an interest in working collaboratively with engineers, hydrologists, software developers, project managers, and clients.
This position can be either based in RTI's U.S. office in Research Triangle Park, NC, or it can be fully remote. Teleworking is permitted within the United States only. Responsibilties include, but are not limited to:- Support the development, testing, and maintenance of operational river forecasting systems, particularly Delft-FEWS.
- Assist with development and modification of FEWS workflows for data ingestion, data processing, quality control, model execution, visualization, reporting, and archiving.
- Support integration of hydrologic, hydraulic, reservoir operations, and related models into forecasting and decision-support systems.
- Process, analyze, and summarize hydrometeorological and water resources data, including observed streamflow, precipitation, reservoir operations data, gridded meteorological data, and forecast products.
- Develop, update, and test scripts, spreadsheets, databases, and other tools to improve efficiency in data processing, modeling, analysis, and visualization.
- Assist with hydrologic model setup, calibration, verification, and forecast evaluation, including comparison of simulations or forecasts against observations.
- Support reservoir modeling tasks, which may include model setup, data preparation, rule or logic testing, scenario evaluation, and integration of reservoir model outputs with forecasting workflows.
- Troubleshoot model, system, data, and workflow issues in collaboration with project teams and, as appropriate, client technical staff.
- Prepare clear documentation, user guidance, training materials, technical notes, and project deliverables.
- Participate in client meetings, internal technical discussions, trainings, and project coordination activities.
- Contribute to applied research, proposal development, and business development efforts as experience grows.
What You'll NeedMinimum Qualifications:- Bachelor's degree in civil engineering, environmental engineering, hydrology, water resources engineering, environmental science, computer science, geography, or a related discipline with relevant coursework or experience and at least one year of relevant professional experience.
- This position is intended for an early-career staff member. Candidates with coursework, internships, research assistantships, capstone projects, or early professional experience related to water resources, hydrology, environmental modeling, data analysis, programming, or decision-support systems are encouraged to apply.
- Coursework or experience in hydrology, hydraulics, water resources engineering, reservoir operations, meteorology, environmental modeling, statistics, GIS, or data science.
- Ability to process, analyze, and interpret technical data accurately.
- Basic programming, scripting, or data analysis experience, such as Python, R, MATLAB, SQL, Excel, or similar tools.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document methods, summarize technical findings, and communicate with multidisciplinary teams.
- Strong attention to detail and willingness to test, troubleshoot, and validate technical work.
- Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a multidisciplinary project environment.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and meet deadlines.
- Willingness to learn new software platforms, modeling tools, data systems, and technical workflows.
- 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:- Experience with Delft-FEWS, CHPS, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS, HEC-ResSim, RiverWare, WISKI, SQL databases, Git/GitHub, cloud computing, or similar tools.
- Experience with hydrologic model setup, calibration, verification, or forecast evaluation.
- Experience working with time series data, geospatial data, gridded meteorological products, streamflow observations, or reservoir operations data.
- Experience developing scripts or tools to automate repetitive data processing, modeling, visualization, or reporting tasks.
- Familiarity with operational forecasting concepts, including forecast workflows, ensemble forecasts, quality control, model initialization, data assimilation, or forecast verification.
- Interest in client-facing technical support, training, and documentation.
- Interest in applied research, software-enabled decision support, and collaborative problem solving for water management challenges.
Hiring Salary Range$78,000 - $96,000
