Computational Ecologist

About the Company

OXMAN is a nature-based research and design company based in Manhattan. We incubate ventures and technologies that reimagine the relationship between humanity and the natural world. EDEN, a division of OXMAN, is a digital design environment for engineering and designing ecosystems, modeling the flows, relationships, and processes that sustain them.

Responsibilities

• Research and identify key ecosystem behaviors to create a conceptual framework for general ecosystem modeling
• Lead the modeling of core ecosystem dynamics such as plant growth and succession
• Develop quantitative metrics to assess ecosystem health, stability, and service provision
• Implement models in a computationally efficient framework with thorough documentation
• Gather and integrate environmental, ecological, and spatial data to validate model outcomes
• Conduct data analysis to derive insights for model development
• Prepare technical documentation outlining model assumptions, data sources, and code structure
• Communicate research and implementation progress to the OXMAN team

Requirements

• Ph.D. or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Computational Ecology, Systems Biology, or a related field
• Strong programming skills in Python or C++
• Experience with frameworks like PyTorch or JAX
• Strong foundation in modeling techniques (differential equations, agent-based modeling, network models, or Bayesian approaches)
• Experience handling large ecological datasets (climate data, remote sensing, biodiversity records)
• Proficiency in Python (NumPy, SciPy, pandas) and Git-based version control
• Experience with geospatial analytics (GIS, GeoPandas, rasterio, GDAL) and spatial databases
• Ability to handle remote sensing and gridded data (xarray)

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of spatial databases, parallel computing, or cloud-based data storage
• Experience with high-performance model implementation (vectorization, profiling/optimization)
• Expertise in uncertainty quantification