26-117: Fire Weather Testbed Cloud Developer

Colorado State University•Boulder, CO

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University (CSU) is seeking a full-time Cloud Developer to collaborate with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO. This role will be part of the NOAA/OAR/GSL Weather Informatics and Decision Support (WIDS) Division’s Fire Weather Testbed (FWT). The primary responsibility is to set up and maintain cloud applications and solutions to support FWT experiments, including the installation of experimental software packages and data sources. CIRA is a research organization within CSU's College of Engineering, partnering with the Department of Atmospheric Science, focused on interdisciplinary atmospheric research. GSL, a federal science laboratory under NOAA, provides environmental observation, prediction, computer, visualization, and information systems for the National Weather Service (NWS). The FWT is a NOAA testbed dedicated to improving fire weather forecasting and decision support services by connecting stakeholders with the scientific research and development communities. This position is funded for two years with a possibility of renewal. The developer will design, develop, test, and refine applications within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud architecture for the FWT, which tests prototype fire weather tools for operational implementation. Responsibilities include setting up and maintaining cloud environments, collaborating with outside organizations to install tools for testing, and assisting in the development of the FWT cloud platform. This involves working with various operating systems, meteorological and environmental data sources, and third-party software. The individual will ensure the availability of installed software during FWT experiments.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field PLUS 5 or more years of relevant work experience; OR Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field PLUS 2 or more years of relevant experience; OR Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
Demonstrated experience developing and managing applications in cloud-based environments.
Experience with AWS services including SQS, EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, and boto3/Java AWS SDK.
Proven experience with backend programming, specifically Python, to retrieve, process, and serve data.
Proficiency in frontend technologies, specifically JavaScript and React, to build modern web applications.
Experience with issue tracking software and distributed version control systems (e.g., Git).
Must be a citizen of the United States or Lawful Permanent Resident with a physical USCIS “Green Card.”
Ability to pass a National Agency Check with Inquiries (NACI) federal background check and receive a NOAA Common Access Card (CAC) ID badge.

Nice To Haves

Experience configuring Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines and utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation.
Experience with containerized systems (Docker) and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes or Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
Experience retrieving, parsing, and working with specialized meteorological and geospatial datasets and formats (including GRIB2, NetCDF, JSON, GeoTIFF, and Zarr).
Experience using ArcGIS for spatial analysis and/or web integrations.
Familiarity with National Weather Service forecasting platforms, data structures, systems architecture, and collaborative IT frameworks (e.g., AWIPS-II, VLab, EDEX, LDM).

Responsibilities

Develop, implement, and maintain the FWT’s cloud architecture.
Take the lead on software requests from the FWT team, suggesting architectural design changes to improve cloud implementations.
Build full-stack mechanisms to retrieve, parse, and seamlessly integrate meteorological and environmental datasets into intuitive UI/UX platforms for scientific research and model verification.
Collaborate with systems engineers, cloud specialists, and security experts across OAR and GSL to deploy scalable solutions that strictly meet NOAA security boundary requirements.
Install, configure, and adapt third-party software applications to be cloud-native or run efficiently in a cloud environment, managing associated data feeds and access controls.
Work closely with research scientists and external developers to develop technical requirements for deployments, translating scientific needs into functional web interfaces and R&D tools.
Provide knowledge, guidance, and training to the team on AWS Cloud Services.
Assist with the management of FWT cloud systems and complete annual reports documenting project status and milestones.