Software Engineer

We have an exciting opportunity for the right candidate to join our Renewable Energy Forecasting Team as a Forecasting Engineer for Meteorological Applications. We provide mission critical wind and solar energy forecasts in real time to customers across the energy industry, paving the way for accelerated use of renewable energy around the world. We are looking for someone who is passionate about the industries we serve, about the disciplines in which we operate, and about making a difference. The ideal candidate will have a combination of software engineering and meteorological expertise, but we will consider a broad range of applicants with skills in either or both disciplines. Data science skills or interest are a plus.

The selected applicant will support our operational forecast system within a real-time 24x7 data delivery environment, have the opportunity to advance the accuracy of our products, and contribute to innovative additions to our product offerings and their architecture. 

Prospective candidates will be expected to have an exceptional professional and/or educational record with excellent scientific, analytical, and/or software engineering skills. Candidates should be able to flourish in a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary environment, working with a first-rate team of meteorologists, software engineers, data scientists, renewable energy experts, and IT professionals around the world. Other essential qualities for the successful candidate include outstanding communication (spoken and written) and interpersonal skills, the ability to work independently and as part of a team, the capacity to balance several ongoing projects at once, and a strong commitment to producing high-quality work independently.

This position will report to the Director of Forecasting. Occasional after-hours and on-call support will be required.

Work Arrangement

The Renewable Energy Team is geographically diverse, with the highest concentration of team members located near the UL Solutions office in Latham, NY. For the Forecasting Engineer position, the following work arrangement options are available:

• Hybrid: At least 2-3 days per week in the Latham, NY or other UL Solutions office
• Fully remote

We are committed to promoting work-life balance with our team members. As such, exact work hours and schedule are flexible, with certain conditions. One or more team members are usually working Monday-Friday between the hours of 6 AM and 8 PM Eastern Time, and we do look for as much overlap as possible with colleagues you interact with the most. We will work with the successful candidate on an appropriate schedule, and encourage strong communication to alert the team of schedule changes. 

The exact responsibilities of the selected applicant will vary based on experience, background, and interest, but will include some or all of the following:

Potential Responsibilities

• Write, modify, and maintain various modules in our forecast system software
• Optimally configure and update the settings and algorithms used in the forecasting process for our customers
• Support the retrieval, ingestion, and quality control, and management of large volumes of data from customer, public, and private sources
• Work with numerical weather prediction (NWP) model, satellite, and other meteorological datasets in formats such as GRIB, NetCDF, XML, and others
• Conduct a wide variety of data analysis projects assessing the accuracy of different components of the forecast system and the data being consumed by it
• Configure, apply, and refine advanced machine learning models for the purpose of optimizing and improving forecast accuracy
• Contribute to the design and development of new and improved forecasting software modules as we position ourselves for scalable growth
• Answer customer questions on how weather conditions relate to the performance of their wind and solar plants, and the forecast errors associated with those weather conditions
• Interact with customers on topics in your area(s) of specialization
• Write and maintain technical documentation
• Assist IT with recommendations on hardware and networking needs for data storage and software installations.

Educational and Work History Requirements:

We will consider applicants at various career stages for the Forecasting Engineer position. A university degree in Meteorology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related scientific or technical discipline is required.

Minimum work history qualifications:

• With a bachelor’s degree, 2+ years of work experience that includes software development or scientific programming as a significant component of the job
• With a master’s degree or higher, we will consider recent graduates, but we