Fire Simulations Engineer
About The Position
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. We are looking for a Fire Simulations Engineer to support the science at the core of our platform: the physics-based model that simulates how "Fast Fires" move through a community under worst-case conditions. You will develop, calibrate, and extend our proprietary fire spread model. This position will cover the entirety of the simulation cycle, from data inputs through to working with our data engineer on outputs. Your work determines how accurately we represent fire behavior, ember transport, and urban conflagration, and it directly shapes the wildfire risk products we deliver to insurance carrier and fire agency customers.
Requirements
- 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
Nice To Haves
- 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
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
Benefits
- Health, dental, vision, unlimited PTO
- 401(k) available
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
