Oceanographic Technology Specialist II - Coastal Modeler

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Remote-United States

5 days ago Requisition

Salary Range: $39.00 To $44.00 Hourly

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Ocean Associates Inc. (OAI) is seeking a full-time Oceanographic Technical Specialist II Coastal Modeler to support the NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) in Silver Spring, MD. OAI is a Virginia corporation established in 2003 that provides consulting and technical services to the U.S. government, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and the private sector. We specialize in scientific program and project management, strategic planning, professional and technical services and stakeholder engagement, supporting government contracts.

CO-OPS is the authoritative source for accurate, reliable, and timely tides, water levels, currents, and other coastal oceanographic and meteorological information. Offering services that support safe and efficient maritime commerce and transportation, help protect public health and safety, and promote robust, resilient coastal communities. CO-OPS maintains ocean observing infrastructure, including more than 200 permanent water level stations on the U.S. coasts and Great Lakes, an integrated system of real-time sensors concentrated in busy seaports, and temporary meters that collect observations for tidal current predictions.

Through these systems, CO-OPS provides the nation with historic and real-time data, forecasts, predictions, and scientific analyses that protect life, the economy, and the environment on the coast.

This position serves as a technical and systems developer responsible for advancing, modernizing, and orchestrating NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS) operational coastal ocean forecast systems. The incumbent drives the transition toward modern software infrastructure by developing and maintaining NOS-workflow as a unified, modular, YAML-driven Python framework and integrating coastal modeling capabilities into NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS-Coastal). The role bridges coastal ocean modeling, High-Performance Computing (HPC), coupled Earth system modeling, and NCEP Central Operations (NCO) standards for operational model implementation.

• Workflow Framework & Orchestration: Lead the design, development, and configuration management of the Python/YAML-based NOS-workflow framework to standardize job execution, preprocessing, model execution, and post-processing across all NOS Operational Forecast Systems.
• NOAA Operational Model Compliance & Operations: Implement and maintain workflow suites conforming strictly to NOAA operational standards and directory structures on NOAA operational supercomputing infrastructure.
• UFS-Coastal & Model Coupling: Develop and integrate ESMF/NUOPC coupled modeling components (UFS-Coastal), enabling seamless coupling between coastal ocean hydrodynamics (SCHISM, ADCIRC, ROMS, FVCOM) and wave models (WaveWatchIII), atmospheric, and hydrologic forcing models (CDEPS/CMEPS).
• CI/CD & Automated Testing: Establish Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines (e.g., Git Hub Actions) and automated regression testing suites on NOAA RDHPCS platforms (Hera, Orion, Hercules) to verify code reproducibility and numerical accuracy prior to operational deployment.
• Containerized Development Environments: Build and support containerized environments (Docker/Apptainer/Singularity) emulating…