Data Scientist, Geospatial

Neara • Houston, TX

10d • $140,000 - $160,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Neara uses advanced machine learning to create physics-enabled digital twins of electricity grids. The company simulates extreme weather and structural stress across utility networks to help asset owners identify risks, optimize investments, and build more resilient infrastructure.

Neara is seeking a Data Scientist, Geospatial to join its Houston team and support a regional electric utility. The role works directly with the customer to build physics-backed models using complex datasets such as LiDAR, GIS, asset records, and weather data. The work supports wildfire prevention, prediction of grid failures during extreme weather, and capital investment decisions to strengthen critical infrastructure.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of hands-on experience in data science or machine learning.
• Strong quantitative intuition for data.
• Excellent communication skills and proven experience presenting complex findings to customers and senior leaders.
• Self-driven, with a bias for action and the ability to take ownership of complex projects and adapt to shifting priorities.
• Ability to collaborate across technical teams and external customer stakeholders.
• A resourceful approach to problem-solving and a track record of working with messy, real-world datasets to deliver business-driven outcomes.

Nice To Haves

• Geospatial data or power grid domain experience.
• Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth scale-up technology environments.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate directly with customer geospatial and GIS teams in a hybrid setting, including time on-site at their offices, to understand data workflows, integrate systems, and solve spatial challenges.
• Build predictive risk models on Neara that combine LiDAR, terrain models, and weather data to simulate conductor sag, sway, and vegetation fall-in risks.
• Translate spatial and structural risk metrics into defensible, data-driven insights that inform utility capital investment decisions for grid hardening.
• Build and maintain spatial data pipelines to ingest, clean, vectorize, and integrate geospatial data formats from the utility partner.
• Establish QA/QC benchmarks for spatial accuracy, coordinate reference system transformations, and structural alignment across data sources.
• Mentor others in model training, data analytics, and building data-driven products.

Benefits

• Highly competitive compensation package with a significant equity component.
• Opportunity to work with an industry-leading spatial data stack, including airborne LiDAR, high-resolution satellite imagery, and physics-enabled digital twins.
• Opportunity to shape the spatial architecture of the core product line while collaborating with ML and software engineers.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed