Physical Oceanographer II

Job Title:

Physical Oceanographer II

Location:

Remote, DMV area preferred

Clearance Required:

Public Trust Clearance

Pay Range: $75,000-$80,000

Final date to receive applications:
November 30, 2026

IBSS is seeking a full-time Physical Oceanographer II to support the NOAA Ocean Service Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) in Silver Spring, MD. A well-qualified candidate will primarily support CO-OPS in researching needs and opportunities for new products, enhancing existing products, and generating operational products derived from physical oceanographic data that inform coastal resilience associated with climate and coastal hazards.

If you are looking to be an instrumental part of a growing, employee and customer-focused company working on exciting issues in environmental science and marine/coastal resources, we want to hear from you!

• Apply oceanographic knowledge to generate operational products derived from physical oceanographic data that inform coastal resilience associated with climate and coastal hazards.
• Conduct periodic reviews of long-term or historical water level databases (e.g., via GIPSLE and pg Admin) to assess accuracy and completeness for public dissemination. This includes Sea Level Trends, Exceedance Probability, High Tide Flooding (historical and annual outlook), Regional Frequency Analyses, Extreme Water Level products, and Coastal Water Temperature products on a routine monthly and annual basis, as well as after high-water events.
• Develop prototype products and visualizations of water level statistics and predictions using MATLAB and Python programming languages, publishing them using code notebooks (e.g., Google Colab, Jupyter) and managing them via Git Hub.
• Conduct data analyses and statistical investigations to evaluate and ensure the reliability and integrity of CO-OPS data. Support product automation, innovation, and R&D into a national gridded operational product. (Experience with AI/Machine Learning models, such as XGBoost for sensor drift detection, is a plus).
• Support the transition of external research of modeled water levels (via a 40-year Coastal Ocean Reanalysis, or CORA) along the entire US ocean coastline into CO-OPS' operational environment through Git Hub and Cloud services. Develop API/data services of gridded water level data to integrate gridded datasets with point-based data, filling gaps between NOAA water level stations approximately every 500 meters along the coast.
• Develop API/data services of gridded water level data—including sea level projections, water level extremes, high tide flooding probabilities, and vertical land motion (VLM)—from a sea level rise technical report to be integrated into the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
• Support NOS scientists with interagency R&D to process, assemble, and analyze NOAA's VLM datasets (tide gauge, GPS, and repeat surveying data). Support the transition of datasets produced from a Bayesian hierarchical model and support their visualization in operational products.
• Support data requirements development and gridded API data services to assist in developing the Sea Level Calculator
  2. Test and perform QA/QC of data display and computation outputs for interactive decision-support products.
• Provide computation, scientific coding, and GIS support to build improved hazard visualization products, integrating legacy products like sea level rise trends with VLM data to produce modified sea level trends and water temperature climatologies.
• Aid in developing QA/QC procedures for nearshore wave observation data to support marine navigation, hydrodynamic modeling, coastal change forecasts, and coastal hazard prediction (e.g., rip currents, storm surge).…