- Company Name
- Shearwater Aerospace
- Job Title
- Geospatial Data Engineer
- Job Description
-
**Job title**
Geospatial Data Engineer
**Role Summary**
Architect, develop, and scale geospatial data pipelines and analytics enabling real‑time autonomous flight decisions. Serve as the inaugural geospatial engineer responsible for transforming raw, multi‑source geospatial and meteorological data into reliable, high‑performance components for autonomous flight optimization.
**Expectations**
* Design production‑grade geospatial infrastructure from inception to deployment.
* Deliver incremental, testable modules in an evolving requirements environment.
* Own end‑to‑end data processing, from ingestion to API exposure, ensuring robustness at scale.
* Collaborate closely with technical leadership to set architectural direction and standards.
**Key Responsibilities**
* Design and implement scalable geospatial processing pipelines balancing performance, accuracy, and extensibility.
* Build GIS algorithms for visibility, terrain analysis, and weather‑aware route optimization.
* Integrate heterogeneous datasets (elevation, obstacles, airspace, meteorological models in NetCDF/GRIB formats).
* Develop REST/GraphQL APIs delivering real‑time flight decision data to onboard systems.
* Establish best‑practice tooling, automated ingestion workflows, and CI/CD pipelines.
* Evolve system architecture as operational demands grow, including scaling strategies for data volume and compute.
**Required Skills**
* 4+ years of geospatial software engineering experience (or 3 years with proven production deliveries).
* Strong command of GIS tools: QGIS, GDAL/OGR, GeoPandas, Rasterio, Xarray, Dask.
* Proficient in Python with scientific stack (NumPy, Pandas, SciPy).
* Deep knowledge of coordinate systems, projections, spatial indexing, and raster/vector processing.
* Experience with spatial databases: PostGIS, Apache Sedona, or equivalent.
* Familiarity with GCP, Docker, Git, and automated data ingestion pipelines.
* Ability to evaluate and justify tool/evolutionary architecture choices (PostGIS vs alternatives, pre‑processing vs on‑demand).
* Excellent problem‑solving, communication, and documentation skills.
**Nice to Have**
* C/C++ for performance‑critical modules.
* Meteorological or atmospheric science background (NetCDF/GRIB handling).
* Aviation domain knowledge.
**Required Education & Certifications**
* Bachelor’s degree in Geographic Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (Master’s preferred but not mandatory).
* Relevant certifications in GIS or cloud platforms are a plus.