Fire Simulations Engineer

About the role

XyloPlan builds physics-based, community-scale wildfire risk modeling and simulation tools. Our Fire Pathways Architecture helps fire agencies, insurance carriers, reinsurers, utilities, and municipalities understand and reduce wildfire risk at the parcel level. We are a seed-stage company preparing for Series A in Q4 2026.

Key responsibilities

• Develop, calibrate, and extend XyloPlan's proprietary physics-based fire spread and ember transport model
• Implement, configure, and run non-proprietary fire behavior models (e.g. FARSITE, FlamMap, ELMFIRE, WRF-Fire) for benchmarking and validation
• Optimize and execute validation studies that compare model output against observed fire behavior and historical fire events
• Translate fire science (combustion, fuel moisture, wind-driven spread, spotting) into performant, testable simulation code
• Build numerical methods and tooling to improve simulation accuracy, stability, and runtime at scale
• Validate and own terrain, vegetation, fuel, and weather inputs and updates
• Quantify and document model uncertainty to support defensible, customer-facing risk products
• Contribute to research direction and technical architecture as the engineering team scales

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in computational physics, numerical modeling, fire behavior modeling, or a closely related simulation discipline
• Strong proficiency in Python and at least one high-performance language (C++, Fortran, Rust, or similar)
• Demonstrated experience building, calibrating, or validating physics-based simulation models
• Solid foundation in numerical methods, computational fluid dynamics, or fire behavior
• Experience working with large scientific datasets and gridded/raster inputs
• Ability to reason from first principles about physical systems and defend modeling choices

Prior experience

• Direct experience with wildfire behavior modeling or fire spread simulation tools (FARSITE, FlamMap, ELMFIRE, WRF-Fire, QUIC-Fire)
• Background in combustion, atmospheric science, heat transfer, or wildland fire science
• Experience with parallel/distributed simulation
• Experience in an early-stage startup environment
• Peer-reviewed publication or applied research in fire behavior or natural hazard modeling

Compensation

• Base salary: $155,000 - $190,000 (commensurate with experience)
• Equity: Stock option grant four-year vesting with one-year cliff
• Benefits: Health, dental, vision, unlimited PTO
• 401(k) available

Location and work model

• Remote within California or Colorado (required)
• Strong preference for candidates who can join weekly in-person work sessions at a coworking space in the Bay Area or Boulder area
• Occasional travel to customer sites and conferences (~10%)