Software Engineer II - WRF

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research•Boulder, CO

12h•Hybrid

About The Position

As a member of the Environmental Resilience Applications Program (ERAP) within NCAR’s Research Applications Laboratory (RAL), the incumbent will be primarily responsible for maintaining, updating, and modernizing an existing code base to support multiple meteorological decision support workflows for operational and research-based use. Specifically, this system drives the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model using differing initialization data to produce forecasts and NCAR Command Language (NCL) and Python driven postprocessing to aid end users with accurate information to make informed decisions. This workflow is deployed across a High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, running both nearly constantly in forecast operations and in an offline research mode. This requires that the incumbent is comfortable in various broad categories of engineering, from hardening code made by scientists to designing/implementing/troubleshooting system architecture on HPC’s.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer-related field and progressive relevant experience, which is typically gained by four to eight years of experience; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Demonstrated skill in Python and/or other scripting languages.
Demonstrated skill in Shell scripting languages.
Demonstrated skill in GIT and/or other code management practices and software.
Skill in real-time operational systems and software development.
Skill in High-Performance Computing systems.
Working knowledge of LINUX/UNIX-based operating systems.
Demonstrated ability to manage time effectively, working across multiple tasks and projects.
Demonstrated ability to overcome problems by applying new knowledge, creativity, and determination.
Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively as a member of a diverse team.
Demonstrated ability to communicate well, orally and in writing.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to NCL and Perl
Familiarity with Fortran
Knowledge of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) concepts, GRIB and netCDF files, or running/compiling WRF and WRF Preprocessing System (WPS).
Web development basics for simple status dashboards.

Responsibilities

System Modernization & Code Refactoring: Replace legacy plotting scripts with optimized, modern alternatives to support research-based and operational forecasting tools.
Initialization Upgrades: Participate in transitioning initialization data for the WRF model, benchmarking performance and integrating workflow changes onto high-performance cluster environments.
Code Optimization: Evaluate performance impacts across data post-processing workflows.
Model Workflows & Upgrades: Periodically upgrade the WRF model used in both research and operations.
Troubleshoot model issues as they arise.
Establish systematic versioning on GitHub to organize the different software versions.
Provide insights on memory, compute, and workflow bottlenecks to inform future HPC hardware specifications.
System Monitoring & Reliability Tools: Maintain and update an automated notification system to alert sysadmins and forecasters to operational model delays or failures.
Maintain and update intuitive, web-based status dashboards enabling real-time product tracking for forecasters.
Monitor real-time systems, ensure continuous pipeline reliability, and interface with university and private sector partners.
Technical Documentation: Maintain/update clear, high-level architecture documentation for the WRF ensemble and custom post-processing pipelines as they are modernized.