Research Scientist, AI for Extreme Weather Forecasting

At Google DeepMind, we value diversity of experience, knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law. If you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Snapshot

Artificial Intelligence could be one of humanity’s most useful inventions. At Google DeepMind, we’re a team of scientists, engineers, machine learning experts and more, working together to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, and collaborate with others on critical challenges, ensuring safety and ethics are the highest priority.

We've built a unique culture and work environment where long-term ambitious research can flourish and where we translate our research into societal benefits. We have made a number of high-profile breakthroughs for medium-range weather forecasting (e.g., GraphCast, GenCast, FGN), and translated this to real-world impact with cyclone predictions informing the National Hurricane Center and other worldwide agencies. We’re looking to expand to other weather extremes, from wildfires to extreme precipitation

About Us

Our mission is to create the world’s most trustworthy and useful weather forecasts for the benefit of humanity. Research is central to our mission, but we also ensure that our research can be turned into tangible impact that benefits humanity. Our interdisciplinary team combines the best techniques from machine learning, statistics, computer science, and physics to build the science for best weather forecasting systems. Our approach encourages collaboration across all groups within the research team, fostering ambitious creativity and innovative research.

The Role

Research Scientists work on a diverse and stimulating range of projects including: developing algorithms and prototype applications, designing and implementing evaluations, and collaborating with Research Engineers to bring our research to real-world impact.

Key responsibilities:

• Providing software design and programming expertise to research projects - pairing closely with Research Engineers to better engineer and implement novel theoretical ideas.
• Digest and understand complex research papers, theory and practice.
• Own, report and present (verbally and in writing) engineering developments and experimental results to both the immediate and broader research teams, and externally. 
• Architect and implement robust and scalable research libraries.
• Implement and evaluate algorithms - acting as a key contributor to the development and iteration throughout the research cycle. 
• Write high quality code (Python and/or C++) to be shared within a research group or more broadly.
• Promoting engineering excellence through mentoring and reviewing.

Our team is especially focused on:

• Machine learning (ML) for weather modelling and forecasting.
• Transformers and graph neural networks
• Probabilistic models and multi-modal learning
• Climate and sustainability-related research.
• A variety of complex problems to work on, with the opportunity to learn constantly through experimentation. 
• Access to a team of leading researchers, engineers and problem solvers to learn from - with the opportunity to contribute your own thinking and specialist knowledge to add to our mission.
• Constant learning, training and development opportunities, from technical courses to being a better presenter - design it to work best for you!
• Access to leading technology, ever-evolving tech stacks and Google-scale systems to allow your work to flourish.
• An opportunity to make contributions to addressing societal challenges.

About You

In order to set you up for success as a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind,  we look for the following skills and experience:

• PhD degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, ML or equivalent. Alternatively, 5+ years of research experience in leading AI industry labs.
• Proven experience, either in industry or a research lab, working on complex ML problems and engineering workflows. 
• Strong knowledge and experience of Python.
• Experience with data processing and visualisation.
• Working knowledge of Jax, Tensorflow or similar frameworks.
• Proven knowledge of ML and/or statistics, e.g. deep learning, etc. 
• Strong knowledge of algorithm design - with a proven ability to write ML algorithms from scratch.
• Experience with research and publishing, e.g. authored papers.

In addition, the following are not required but would be an advantage: 

• A track record of successful collaborative software development, either open-source (e.g. GitHub) or proprietary (e.g. internships).
• Experience with modelling of environmental systems (e.g., weather, oceans, sea ice).
• Experience in ML for the physical sciences and/or sustainability.
• Experience with large-scale and/or distributed computing.
• Working knowledge of C/C++.