Postdoctoral Researcher / Data Scientist – Mountain water and cryosphere

The cryosphere and mountain hydrosphere research group (cryohydro.ista.ac.at; ista.ac.at/en/research/pellicciotti-group/) is looking for a data scientist or postdoc to join a large interdisciplinary project (MountAInWater, funded by the VIEW program from Schmidt Sciences) reshaping how we understand mountain water resources and the mountain cryosphere.

You’ll work at the intersection of AI, remote sensing, and high-resolution land surface modelling — combining advanced cryosphere and hydrosphere observations with climate adaptation strategies. Your core mission: help build a next-generation, large-scale dataset of mountain water resources that will set a new standard in the field.

Your Responsibilities

The successful candidate will play a key role in shaping the data infrastructure of the project. This includes:

• Designing and implementing efficient data pipelines for large geospatial datasets
• Managing, harmonising, and documenting multi-source environmental data across all work packages
• Facilitating efficient data exchange across institutions and work packages
• Supporting reproducible workflows and best practices in scientific computing
• Construct an API / user-interface to download the data resulting from AI emulator in an efficient and lightweight manner
• Involvement in the design and the functionality of the digital twin / web platform that aims to make project output accessible
• Contributing to the development of a project-wide dataset as a major output
• Supporting data flow and collaboration between work packages
• Opportunities to contribute to scientific analyses, scientific publications and fieldwork.

Your Profile

We are looking for candidates with strong skills in data science and/or geospatial data handling and an interest in Earth sciences applications.

Applicants must have:

• A PhD in data science, geosciences, hydrology, climate science, computer science, or a related field
• Strong programming skills (including API / user interface)
• Experience handling large and complex datasets, especially geospatial data formats (e.g. NetCDF, GeoTIFF, Zarr, GeoJSON)
• Experience with version control and reproducible research practices

In addition, the following is desirable:

• Experience with environmental or climate data
• Experience with scientific computing or knowledge of high-performance computing (HPC) environments
• Experience with cloud platforms and/or large-scale data processing
• Background in machine learning or AI applications
• Experience with API / user interfaces
• Experience with web development and interactive geospatial visualization is a plus
• Ability to build science communication platforms that translate complex model outputs into intuitive, accessible interfaces for policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public — combining storytelling, maps, and interactive graphics to drive real-world impact

Application documents: Motivation letter, CV, minimum 2 references.

To submit your application please email the documents to:francesca.pellicciotti@ista.ac.at and adria.fontrodona-bach@ista.ac.at