Postdoctoral Scholar - Open Source Earth Science Software Development and Global Atmospheric Modeling

About the role

The Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences at Penn State University invites applications for a full-time Postdoctoral Scholar to support the NSF-funded project "Transitioning UXarray to a Sustainable Open Source Ecosystem" (NSF POSE).

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the continued development and maintenance of UXarray, including analysis operators, grid subsetting, remapping, and plotting capabilities for unstructured mesh data.
• Help develop and maintain contributor guides and onboarding documentation to lower the barrier for external contributors.
• Support code review processes via GitHub Pull Requests following open development principles.
• Represent the UXarray project at major scientific conferences and workshops, including AGU and AMS annual meetings.
• Aid in the delivery of training workshops at universities and research centers.
• Apply UXarray to real-world Earth science analysis workflows using outputs from high-resolution atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface models.
• Develop and publish Pythia Cookbooks and Jupyter-based tutorials showcasing UXarray capabilities across scientific domains (climate, weather, hydrology, ocean).
• Contribute to peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations (e.g., AGU, AMS, EGU).
• Conduct and analyze global and regionally refined simulations using E3SM (including regionally refined mesh and convection-permitting configurations such as SCREAM), with a focus on high-impact weather systems including tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, and extratropical cyclones.
• Use Betacast to initialize E3SM for hindcast experiments targeting specific extreme weather events, supporting both process-level understanding and model evaluation.
• Contribute to the evaluation of AI/ML-based Earth system emulators (e.g., ACE-E3SM, FourCastNet, NeuralGCM) against physics-based benchmarks, using process-oriented diagnostics.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in atmospheric science, oceanography, Earth science, or a closely related Earth or computational science field, conferred prior to the start date.
• Demonstrated experience with scientific Python programming (e.g., NumPy, Xarray, Matplotlib, Pandas, Dask).
• Experience with version control (e.g., Git/GitHub) and collaborative software development workflows.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce clear documentation and present scientific results.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with unstructured grid data and/or numerical modeling output from weather and climate models.
• Prior contributions to open-source scientific software projects.
• Familiarity with DevOps/GitOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and containerization.
• Experience developing tutorials, training materials, or teaching workshops.
• Interest in open science principles and community-driven software development.
• Experience running and analyzing output from global or regional atmospheric models, particularly E3SM, CESM, WRF, or SCREAM.

Skills

• Scientific Python programming (e.g., NumPy, Xarray, Matplotlib, Pandas, Dask).
• Version control (e.g., Git/GitHub).
• Collaborative software development workflows.
• Written and verbal communication skills.
• Unstructured grid data and/or numerical modeling output from weather and climate models.
• DevOps/GitOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and containerization.
• Tutorials, training materials, or teaching workshops.
• Open science principles and community-driven software development.
• Global or regional atmospheric models, particularly E3SM, CESM, WRF, or SCREAM.

Benefits

This position is funded for one year from the date of hire, with the possibility of renewal based on funding availability and satisfactory performance. The expected start date is September 15, 2026.

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $55,000 - $65,000 per year.

Schedule

The position is a full-time appointment at 100% effort.