Title:
Wildland Fire Risk Scientist
Position Summary
The primary focus of this position is to provide research support to the USGS team tasked with understanding wildfire risk to buildings, the wildland-urban interface, and other valued assets. This will require advanced level science support with experience in remote sensing, geographic information systems, geospatial processing, scripting, statistical analysis, and science communications.
Title: Wildland Fire Risk Scientist
Responsibilities:
Specifically, the successful candidate will:
- Forward research in wildfire exposure and risk to buildings, the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and other valued assets to inform DOI and USWFS wildfire risk assessments and risk mitigation strategies.
- Advance methods to predict wildfire exposure and damage to buildings at national or larger scales using simulation models and deep and machine learning
- Lead development and publication of journal articles related to this research
- Develop, maintain, and expand data sets that quantify building losses caused wildfires annually
- Develop prototypes and identify data sources for non-building valued assets such as communication, energy, hydrological, or transportation infrastructure impacted by wildfires
- Develop, update, and analyze global- and national-scale datasets mapping Wildland Urban Interface using building footprints, census bureau, land cover, and fire occurrence data
Required Education and Experience:
Candidates must meet the requirements listed below to be considered for this position; please note required items on your resume.
- Must have a 3-year residency in the United States
- This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a national agency check and background investigation after hire to obtain credentials for facility access and user accounts.
- Education: PhD or advanced Degree or equivalent experience in ecology, landscape ecology, forestry, fire science, conservation science or another relevant field - especially study in how ecological systems function both naturally and after disturbance
- Years of Experience: Must have minimum 3-5 years of recent and related work experience in fire ecology and knowledge with plant community dynamics across the landscape
- Advanced understanding of ground, surface, and canopy fuel types/characteristics and their effects on wildland fire behavior in conjunction with environmental factors
- Experience with image processing and GIS software (e.g., ERDAS, ArcGIS, ArcPro, QGIS)
- Familiarity with raster and vector data processing and ability to perform spatial analysis and validation
- Strong interpersonal communication, technical writing, editing and presentation skills and an advanced knowledge of Microsoft office tools for reporting and documentation of processes and procedures
Minimum Requirements
- Experience with Python and R, and potentially AI-supported development environments (e.g., Kiro) to develop models, data analyses, and visualizations
- Experience with shared code repositories
- Ability to serve in both lead author and co-author roles to plan and complete manuscripts targeting high-impact scientific journals
- Participate in virtual and occasional in-person team meetings as needed
- Ability to work in a team environment to help shape, manage and execute projects applying geospatial data and systems to solve geospatial problems
Areas of Desired Experience & Skills
- Ability to contribute to the definition, direction, and implementation of the Wildland Fuels Program at EROS
- Ability to self-teach in areas of weakness utilizing available on-the-job training resources
KBR partners with several other companies to fulfill its requirements as a government contractor. The selected subcontracting companies align their benefits as closely as possible to those of KBR.
KBR Benefits:
KBR offers a selection of competitive lifestyle benefits which could include 401K plan with company match, medical, dental, vision, life insurance, AD&D, flexible spending account, disability, paid time off, or flexible work schedule. We support career advancement through professional training and development.
Click here to learn more:
#LI-EM2
