Software Developer, Emerging Hydrographic Data Systems

The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping is seeking a Software Developer / Scientific Programmer to support software architecture and technical programming for research and operational systems that produce, validate, analyze, and deliver shallow-water bathymetry and related coastal geospatial data products. The position leads the design and maintenance of scalable, automated data-processing workflows for coastal remote-sensing data, with emphasis on ICESat-2 and airborne bathymetric lidar for nearshore bathymetry and comparable applications that support navigational safety, coastal science, habitat assessment, and hydrographic research.

• Lead the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of scientific software systems that process hydrographic data from satellite, lidar, and other emerging survey methods.
• Build robust, modular, and well-documented code bases for point-cloud processing, sea-surface and seafloor return classification, refraction correction, uncertainty estimation, validation, data transformation, and delivery of analysis-ready products.
• Implement scalable workflows using languages and tools such as Python, C++, and MATLAB, scientific computing libraries, geospatial/HDF5 data formats, APIs, containerized environments, automated testing frameworks, and version-controlled collaborative development practices.
• Establish and promote best practices for software engineering in a research setting, including documentation standards, testing, continuous integration, data provenance, quality assurance, and reproducibility.

• Support ongoing development and testing of the NOAA Sat Bathy software tool, cBLUE (comprehensive bathymetric lidar uncertainty estimator), and PSUE (photogrammetric shoreline uncertainty estimator)
• Support ongoing research and development of the NASA ATL
  24 global nearshore bathymetric data product.
• Create tools and workflows for comparison of satellite-derived bathymetry against airborne lidar, vessel-based sonar, charting, or other reference datasets to evaluate accuracy and fitness for use.
• Contribute to integration and analysis of satellite-derived bathymetry with broader hydrographic, coastal habitat, coral reef, and nearshore mapping applications.

• Design and optimize automated processing workflows for large archives of remote-sensing data using cloud, high-performance, or distributed computing resources.
• Monitor processing performance, detect failures, improve throughput, manage intermediate and final data products, and support repeatable updates as new data sets become available.
• Ensure data handling, documentation, and software practices support transparency, traceability, cybersecurity expectations, and long‑term maintainability.

• Work with scientists, hydrographers, coastal engineers, data managers, sponsors, and institutional partners to refine software requirements and interpret technical outcomes.
• Prepare technical documentation, user guides, workflow notes, release notes, diagrams, and training materials for internal and external users.
• Contribute technical content to reports, proposals, progress updates, publications, presentations, demonstrations, and stakeholder briefings.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science and/or software engineering or a closely related field
• At least three years of professional experience developing and testing software tools for working with coastal/nearshore remote sensing.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, testing, documenting, and maintaining…