The Role

We are looking for an experienced Applied Scientist to join our team to help the maritime shipping industry to adapt to a rapidly changing economic, regulatory, and ocean environment.

Wayfinder, our dynamic voyage optimization platform, is a ground-up new technology that uses our proprietary data and forecasts to deliver the most efficient strategies to vessels and shoreside teams in real time. Data-driven, dynamic optimization unlocks unprecedented potential for efficiency and savings, and gives Owners, Operators, and Charterers unparalleled control over speed, fuel consumption, and their CII strategy.

The role presents a unique opportunity for an ambitious individual to drive the development of next-generation vessel performance and routing models to power the future of maritime route optimization.

Impact you’ll own

• Analyze vessel data to extract new insights in vessel behavior and performance, and communicate findings to engineering, product, marketing, sales and customers. Develop processes and/or systems around analyses to incorporate insights in a scalable fashion
• Develop improved data-driven vessel performance models to accurately forecast fuel consumption, vessel speed and other performance characteristics in weather
• Work with product and engineering to scope technical implementation of features into the route-finding engine, and participate in development and testing of these features
• Help resolve operational issues with vessel performance models

About you

• Graduate level education in science / engineering / math or equivalent experience (e.g. performing research or publishing articles on related topics).
• Knowledge in data-driven and physics based modeling, and experience with solving (non)linear optimization problems
• Comfortable using Python and Python based optimization / numerics / machine learning frameworks
• Strong verbal and written communication skills. Able to communicate complex technical concepts to internal and external stakeholders
• Passionate about the ocean and marine technology
• Excited about the prospect of joining an agile, fast-moving team
• Enjoy learning new concepts and comfortable exploring scientific literature, even outside of your direct field of expertise
• Excited to use data-driven approaches to build meaningful insights from ocean data for industry and society

Bonus Points

• Background in marine technology or related fields (ocean engineering, naval architecture, etc.)
• Knowledge of software development, development workflows, code management software such as Git/Github, sharing findings through Jupyter notebooks, etc.
• Experience with Rust, cloud computing

Estimated Salary Range

• $150,000-$170,000
• The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and may be modified in the future. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, experience, and equity package.

Sofar's Commitment to Climate Justice

We at Sofar Ocean acknowledge that careers in the marine sciences “... have traditionally been, and remain, non-diverse work environments”, thereby limiting the entry and prosperity of underrepresented groups in the space. (Johri et al., 2021) Many of these same groups are disproportionately affected by climate change, and are often excluded from decision making that directly address their interests and needs.

We are committed to addressing these climate injustices and highly encourage people who identify as women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) to apply.