Early-Career Water Resources Engineer / Scientist
About The Position
RTI's Center for Water, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Solutions (WARES) is seeking a motivated Early-Career Water Resources / Environmental Engineer or Scientist to join our Forecasting and River Operations team. This team develops operational river forecasting systems, hydrologic and reservoir models, data workflows, and decision-support tools for water management agencies, hydropower utilities, and other clients. The team has extensive experience implementing and supporting river forecast systems, integrating hydrologic, hydraulic, reservoir operations, and other models, and developing workflows for data ingestion, quality control, visualization, reporting, and forecast evaluation. This role offers the opportunity to work on impactful domestic and international projects, learn from a multidisciplinary team, and contribute to tools that support science-based decision-making in water resources management. The successful candidate will grow technical, communication, and project leadership skills in a supportive research environment.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in civil engineering, environmental engineering, hydrology, water resources engineering, environmental science, computer science, geography, or a related discipline with relevant coursework or experience and at least one year of relevant professional experience.
- Coursework or experience in hydrology, hydraulics, water resources engineering, reservoir operations, meteorology, environmental modeling, statistics, GIS, or data science.
- Ability to process, analyze, and interpret technical data accurately.
- Basic programming, scripting, or data analysis experience, such as Python, R, MATLAB, SQL, Excel, or similar tools.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document methods, summarize technical findings, and communicate with multidisciplinary teams.
- Strong attention to detail and willingness to test, troubleshoot, and validate technical work.
- Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a multidisciplinary project environment.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and meet deadlines.
- Willingness to learn new software platforms, modeling tools, data systems, and technical workflows.
- Must be legally authorized to work in the United States and not require future sponsorship for employment visa status.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with Delft-FEWS, CHPS, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS, HEC-ResSim, RiverWare, WISKI, SQL databases, Git/GitHub, cloud computing, or similar tools.
- Experience with hydrologic model setup, calibration, verification, or forecast evaluation.
- Experience working with time series data, geospatial data, gridded meteorological products, streamflow observations, or reservoir operations data.
- Experience developing scripts or tools to automate repetitive data processing, modeling, visualization, or reporting tasks.
- Familiarity with operational forecasting concepts, including forecast workflows, ensemble forecasts, quality control, model initialization, data assimilation, or forecast verification.
- Interest in client-facing technical support, training, and documentation.
- Interest in applied research, software-enabled decision support, and collaborative problem solving for water management challenges.
Responsibilities
- Support the development, testing, and maintenance of operational river forecasting systems, particularly Delft-FEWS.
- Assist with development and modification of FEWS workflows for data ingestion, data processing, quality control, model execution, visualization, reporting, and archiving.
- Support integration of hydrologic, hydraulic, reservoir operations, and related models into forecasting and decision-support systems.
- Process, analyze, and summarize hydrometeorological and water resources data, including observed streamflow, precipitation, reservoir operations data, gridded meteorological data, and forecast products.
- Develop, update, and test scripts, spreadsheets, databases, and other tools to improve efficiency in data processing, modeling, analysis, and visualization.
- Assist with hydrologic model setup, calibration, verification, and forecast evaluation, including comparison of simulations or forecasts against observations.
- Support reservoir modeling tasks, which may include model setup, data preparation, rule or logic testing, scenario evaluation, and integration of reservoir model outputs with forecasting workflows.
- Troubleshoot model, system, data, and workflow issues in collaboration with project teams and, as appropriate, client technical staff.
- Prepare clear documentation, user guidance, training materials, technical notes, and project deliverables.
- Participate in client meetings, internal technical discussions, trainings, and project coordination activities.
- Contribute to applied research, proposal development, and business development efforts as experience grows.
Benefits
- competitive base salary
- generous paid time off policy
- merit based annual increases
- bonus opportunities
- robust recognition program
- competitive range of insurance plans (including health, dental, life, and short-term and long-term disability)
- access to a retirement savings program such as a 401(k) plan
- paid parental leave for all parents
- financial assistance with adoption expenses or infertility treatments
- financial reimbursement for education and developmental opportunities
- employee assistance program
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Entry Level
