What are the responsibilities and job description for the Geospatial Statistician for Extreme Weather and Model Evaluation (Academic Hourly) position at University of Illinois System?
DPI Applied Rsrch and Dev - Urbana
Posting Category:
The DPI Climate Hub (https://www.climate-dpi.org) is seeking a highly motivated candidate with expertise in statistics, geospatial data analysis, environmental data science, atmospheric sciences, remote sensing, or a related field to support research and development for the AerisIQ weather forecasting system (https://aerisiq.io) The ideal candidate will contribute as an Extreme Weather and Geospatial Statistics Analyst, supporting the analysis of high-impact weather events and the evaluation of model performance against observational datasets. This role will focus on developing statistical and geospatial workflows to compare numerical weather model outputs with in-situ observations, radar, satellite, reanalysis, and other environmental datasets. The candidate will help translate model–observation insights into operational tools, performance metrics, and decision-support products.
Responsibilities
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
This is a part-time Academic Hourly position. The expected start date is as soon as possible after the search posting closes. The hourly range for this position is $20-$25 per hour based on experience.
Click here for applicable information on the Affordable Care Act and Paid Leave For All Workers.
Sponsorship for Work Authorization is not available for this position.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE & DEADLINE INFORMATION
For full consideration, please click the APPLY NOW link on this page to submit an application on the university portal accepting applications for this system office position by 6 pm on 6/5/2026.
System Human Resource Services
(217) 333-2600
erhr@uillinois.edu
The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.
Applicants with disabilities are encouraged to apply and may request a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (2008) to complete the application and/or interview process. Requests may be submitted by contacting the System Human Resource Services at 217-333-2600, or by emailing ADAaccessibility@uillinois.edu .
Requisition ID: req3006
Job Category: Extra Help
Campus Location: Chicago
Posting Category:
The DPI Climate Hub (https://www.climate-dpi.org) is seeking a highly motivated candidate with expertise in statistics, geospatial data analysis, environmental data science, atmospheric sciences, remote sensing, or a related field to support research and development for the AerisIQ weather forecasting system (https://aerisiq.io) The ideal candidate will contribute as an Extreme Weather and Geospatial Statistics Analyst, supporting the analysis of high-impact weather events and the evaluation of model performance against observational datasets. This role will focus on developing statistical and geospatial workflows to compare numerical weather model outputs with in-situ observations, radar, satellite, reanalysis, and other environmental datasets. The candidate will help translate model–observation insights into operational tools, performance metrics, and decision-support products.
Responsibilities
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- Conduct retrospective analyses of extreme weather events, including storms, high winds, heatwaves, extreme rainfall, and flooding.
- Perform quantitative comparisons between simulated forecasts and observational datasets across space and time.
- Develop statistical metrics and geospatial methods to evaluate model performance, bias, uncertainty, and event detection skill.
- Process and analyze large-scale gridded and point-based environmental datasets, including NWP outputs, station observations, radar, satellite, and reanalysis products.
- Support spatial matching, interpolation, aggregation, and validation workflows for model–observation comparison.
- Collaborate with software engineers and domain experts to develop automated workflows for data ingestion, preprocessing, post-processing, visualization, and analysis.
- Contribute to the development of operational evaluation tools and decision-support products for extreme weather applications.
- Background in statistics, geospatial data science, atmospheric sciences, environmental data science, remote sensing, engineering, or a related field.
- Experience working with large-scale environmental, weather, climate, or geospatial datasets.
- Strong programming skills in Python, R, MATLAB, or similar languages.
- Familiarity with statistical modeling, spatial analysis, uncertainty analysis, or model evaluation methods.
- Experience working with gridded model outputs and point-based observational datasets.
- Working knowledge of environmental and weather data sources, such as in-situ observations, radar, satellite products, reanalysis datasets, or numerical weather prediction model outputs.
- Familiarity with geospatial data tools, packages, and formats, such as NetCDF, GeoTIFF, shapefiles, GeoJSON, xarray, rasterio, geopandas, ArcGIS, or QGIS.
- Experience with spatial matching, interpolation, aggregation, bias correction, validation, or uncertainty quantification across model and observation datasets.
- Understanding of atmospheric processes, weather systems, or extreme weather events.
- Experience with automated workflows, data visualization, dashboards, or operational forecasting systems.
This is a part-time Academic Hourly position. The expected start date is as soon as possible after the search posting closes. The hourly range for this position is $20-$25 per hour based on experience.
Click here for applicable information on the Affordable Care Act and Paid Leave For All Workers.
Sponsorship for Work Authorization is not available for this position.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE & DEADLINE INFORMATION
For full consideration, please click the APPLY NOW link on this page to submit an application on the university portal accepting applications for this system office position by 6 pm on 6/5/2026.
System Human Resource Services
(217) 333-2600
erhr@uillinois.edu
The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.
Applicants with disabilities are encouraged to apply and may request a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (2008) to complete the application and/or interview process. Requests may be submitted by contacting the System Human Resource Services at 217-333-2600, or by emailing ADAaccessibility@uillinois.edu .
Requisition ID: req3006
Job Category: Extra Help
Campus Location: Chicago
Salary : $20 - $25