Research Associate III in Hydrology

Duties / Responsibilities

• Support implementation and evaluation of process-based hydrologic and land surface models (LSMs) for regional applications.
• Aid in streamflow simulation, watershed-scale water balance analysis, and surface water budget assessments.
• Contribute to model parameterization, calibration, and validation using in situ observations (e.g., USGS streamflow gauges, soil moisture networks) and gridded datasets.
• Process and analyze meteorological forcing data and remotely sensed observations relevant to hydrologic applications.
• Assist in the development of reproducible workflows for model execution, post-processing, and visualization.
• Support drought and flood assessment activities relevant to the Alabama Office of the State Climatologist.
• Contribute to technical documentation, reporting, and peer-reviewed publications.
• Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and external stakeholders as needed.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (BS) in Hydrology, Civil or Environmental Engineering, Earth System Science, Atmospheric Science, or a closely related field.
• 2 to 4 years of verifiable, full-time work experience.
• Strong foundational knowledge of hydrologic processes, including runoff generation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, soil moisture dynamics, and watershed hydrology.
• Experience with scientific programming (e.g., Python, MATLAB, R, or similar).
• Familiarity with handling geospatial and gridded datasets (e.g., NetCDF, GeoTIFF).
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a research environment.

Desired Qualifications

• Master’s degree (MS) in Hydrology, Civil or Environmental Engineering, Earth System Science, or related field is preferred.
• Experience with process-based hydrologic or land surface models (e.g., VIC, LIS, Noah-MP, or comparable frameworks).
• Experience with streamflow model calibration and evaluation metrics (e.g., NSE, bias, RMSE).
• Familiarity with meteorological forcing datasets (e.g., NLDAS, reanalysis products, gridded precipitation).
• Experience working in Linux/HPC environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.