Software Developer, Emerging Hydrographic Data Systems
About The Position
The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping is seeking a Software Developer / Scientific Programmer to support software architecture and technical programming for research and operational systems that produce, validate, analyze, and deliver shallow-water bathymetry and related coastal geospatial data products. The position leads the design and maintenance of scalable, automated data-processing workflows for coastal remote-sensing data, with emphasis on ICESat-2 and airborne bathymetric lidar for nearshore bathymetry and comparable applications that support navigational safety, coastal science, habitat assessment, and hydrographic research. This role translates research algorithms into reliable, documented, and reproducible production software; collaborates with scientists, engineers, students, and external partners; supports data quality assessment and uncertainty characterization; and provides technical oversight for software development practices, cloud/high-performance processing, version control, testing, and user-facing documentation. The position requires deep technical judgment, the ability to lead complex software efforts in a research environment, and strong communication skills to bridge scientific requirements and production-quality implementation.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in computer science and/or software engineering or a closely related field
- At least three years of professional experience developing and testing software tools for working with coastal/nearshore remote sensing.
- Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, testing, documenting, and maintaining production-quality scientific or geospatial software in Python, C++, and MATLAB.
- Experience working with large scientific datasets, remote-sensing or geospatial formats, and reproducible data-processing workflows.
- Experience with ICESat-2/ATLAS bathymetric data product development, including ATL03 and/or ATL24
- Experience working with the NOAA SatBathy software
- Experience with point-cloud classification, bathymetric lidar, and satellite-derived bathymetry.
- Advanced proficiency with Python and scientific computing packages; ability to work with HDF5/NetCDF, GeoTIFF, point-cloud, vector, raster, and other geospatial data formats.
- Knowledge of geospatial coordinate systems, vertical datums, bathymetric mapping concepts, lidar/remote-sensing data processing, uncertainty estimation, and validation against reference datasets.
- Experience with version control, code review, testing, continuous integration, documentation, issue tracking, and collaborative software development practices.
- Ability to work across research and operational contexts, translating scientific requirements into reliable software while communicating technical tradeoffs clearly to non-software audiences.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills, with attention to data quality, processing efficiency, reproducibility, and long-term maintainability.
- Occasional travel or participation in technical meetings, workshops, demonstrations, or field/project coordination activities may be required.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with machine learning or ensemble classification approaches for scientific data, including confidence scoring, model evaluation, and quality metrics.
- Experience with cloud platforms or distributed processing environments, including AWS-based scientific processing, containerization, workflow orchestration, and large-scale data-product generation.
- Familiarity with hydrographic survey data, airborne bathymetric lidar, multibeam sonar, NOAA/NSIDC/NASA Earthdata ecosystems, OGC/ISO metadata, or data-product publication requirements.
Responsibilities
- Lead the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of scientific software systems that process hydrographic data from satellite, lidar, and other emerging survey methods.
- Build robust, modular, and well-documented code bases for point-cloud processing, sea-surface and seafloor return classification, refraction correction, uncertainty estimation, validation, data transformation, and delivery of analysis-ready products.
- Implement scalable workflows using languages and tools such as Python, C++, and MATLAB, scientific computing libraries, geospatial/HDF5 data formats, APIs, containerized environments, automated testing frameworks, and version-controlled collaborative development practices.
- Establish and promote best practices for software engineering in a research setting, including documentation standards, testing, continuous integration, data provenance, quality assurance, and reproducibility.
- Support ongoing development and testing of the NOAA SatBathy software tool, cBLUE (comprehensive bathymetric lidar uncertainty estimator), and PSUE (photogrammetric shoreline uncertainty estimator)
- Support ongoing research and development of the NASA ATL24 global nearshore bathymetric data product.
- Create tools and workflows for comparison of satellite-derived bathymetry against airborne lidar, vessel-based sonar, charting, or other reference datasets to evaluate accuracy and fitness for use.
- Contribute to integration and analysis of satellite-derived bathymetry with broader hydrographic, coastal habitat, coral reef, and nearshore mapping applications.
- Design and optimize automated processing workflows for large archives of remote-sensing data using cloud, high-performance, or distributed computing resources.
- Monitor processing performance, detect failures, improve throughput, manage intermediate and final data products, and support repeatable updates as new data sets become available.
- Ensure data handling, documentation, and software practices support transparency, traceability, cybersecurity expectations, and long-term maintainability.
- Work with scientists, hydrographers, coastal engineers, data managers, sponsors, and institutional partners to refine software requirements and interpret technical outcomes.
- Prepare technical documentation, user guides, workflow notes, release notes, diagrams, and training materials for internal and external users.
- Contribute technical content to reports, proposals, progress updates, publications, presentations, demonstrations, and stakeholder briefings.
Benefits
- USNH Employee Benefits
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Entry Level
