Geospatial Geologist - Leidos

Description

Looking for an opportunity to make an impact?

The Leidos Research Support Team (LRST) supporting the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is seeking a Geology/Geospatial Research Scientist to join our team in Albany, OR or Morgantown, WV. This is an opportunity to execute fundamental and applied research with world-class scientists and engineers using state of the art equipment to perform research aligned with the goals of the U.S. Department of Energy. The successful candidate will conduct high-impact research focused on accelerating carbon management and characterizing critical mineral resources:

Accelerating carbon management – Current CO2 (carbon dioxide) transport and storage efforts are focused on developing federated, dynamic geospatial databases and data-driven tools that leverage key geologic, social, environmental, and infrastructure (e.g., wellbores, pipelines, etc.) datasets to ultimately inform safe CO2 injection and transport operations and associated infrastructure planning across the country.

Characterizing critical mineral resources – Current critical mineral research efforts are focused on developing and commercializing technologies that enable sustainable, cost-effective domestic production of critical minerals (e.g., lithium, rare-earth elements, etc.) from unconventional sources (i.e., undeveloped in-situ geologic ores, energy-related byproduct waste streams). Project goals include developing methods and advanced geospatial, data-driven tools to identify and evaluate potential critical mineral sources and feedstocks.

Location: This position is based at the NETL lab in Albany, OR (preferred), or Morgantown, WV. Only candidates near (or willing to relocate to) the Albany, OR and/or Morgantown, WV area will be considered.

What this opportunity with Leidos supporting NETL uniquely provides you: 

• Working on applied, cutting-edge projects with global impact while being mentored by the nation’s leading energy scientists and engineers.   
• Real-world experience supplemented with technical development and discussions that provide unique insight into the broad range of mission critical engineering and scientific disciplines NETL leverages to support national energy research and policy development.  
• Access to world-class, customized facilities and computational assets specific to high impact energy research, technology generation, and product development.  
• Support proposal development focused on expanding industry and scientific partnerships and developing new technical opportunities for NETL with federal guidance.  

Primary Responsibilities:

• Support the identification, acquisition, processing, and integration of non-spatial and spatial data using Geographic Information System (GIS) software and Python scripting.
• Identify credible data sources through extensive literature reviews and online research, then acquire and process data for further analytics.
• Support quality assurance and control of geospatial data products and associated metadata prior to public release.
• Support energy research by leveraging scientific, spatial, statistical analytics, as well as appropriate artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.
• Collaborate with an interdisciplinary team, including geologists, geographers, chemists, computer scientists, environmental scientists, and other researchers to assist each other in accomplishing project related tasks.
• Build and maintain relationships with internal and external clients.
• Assist in writing methods, results, and data interpretations for publications in high quality, scientific peer-reviewed journals, and technical reports.
• Develop and present results for oral presentations to staff, stakeholders, and at professional conferences.
• Provide weekly and monthly technical updates to research team members and project management.
• Provide leadership and expertise on projects including delegation to team members and communication of project milestone status to management.

Required Education, Experience & Other:

• Bachelor's degree in Geology, Geography, Geospatial Information Sciences, Environmental Sciences, or related field with 2+ years of research experience or Master’s degree in Geology, Geography, Geospatial Information Sciences, Environmental Sciences, or related field with 1+ years of research experience.
• Experience and knowledge of geologic and natural-engineered subsurface systems as it relates to carbon transport & storage and critical mineral resources.
• Experience working with vector and raster subsurface data, including wellbore attributes, geologic maps, geochemical samples, geophysical, and other critical energy infrastructure datasets.
• Competent in non-spatial and spatial data acquisition, management, handling, and analytics using GIS software.
• Familiar with Esri products (i.e., ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online) and other open-source GIS software (i.e., QGIS).
• Experience developing Esri web applications, including Experience Builder, Dashboards, and Story Maps.
• Experience identifying, acquiring, and processing credible data (including tabular and spatial data) and metadata from online sources.
• Experience collaborating on a dynamic team.
• Leadership skills coordinating multiple teams and projects.
• Must be able to meet the requirements for gaining access to work on the NETL campus.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen.

Preferred Experience:

• Familiarity with geologic industry (i.e., oil and gas, mining) software, including but not limited to Petra, Petrel, EarthVision, Leapfrog, or OpendTect.
• Familiarity with GIS and related python libraries (i.e. ArcPy, GDAL/OGR, Pandas, etc.).
• Selecting and applying appropriate spatial and statistical analyses for a variety of use cases. Experience with and willingness to learn AI (Artificial Intelligence)/ML (Machine Learning) techniques.
• Writing and publishing scientific reports and presenting results at conferences and workshops.
• Communicating work to a range of audiences (I.e., academic conference, technical audience, or management).

Salary Range for this position: $75K to $90K

Original Posting Date:

While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.