Technical Aide

The Alizadeh research group studies land–atmosphere interaction using satellite observations of soil moisture, vegetation water status, evapotranspiration, and photosynthesis. The Research Assistant will support active projects on how vegetation and the land surface respond to drought, heat, and compound hydroclimatic extremes across the regional and global scales.

Duties include:

• Downloading, subsetting, and organizing satellite and reanalysis datasets (SMAP, ECOSTRESS, OCO-2/3 SIF, MODIS, ERA5, AmeriFlux)
• Writing and maintaining Python processing scripts, run on the MSU High Performance Computing Center
• Performing quality control, regridding, and time-series alignment across products with differing spatial and temporal resolution
• Producing figures, maps, and summary tables for manuscripts and proposals
• Documenting code and data in a shared Git repository so analyses can be reproduced
• Summarizing methods and datasets from the literature relevant to assigned tasks
• Attending weekly group meetings and reporting progress in writing

This is a temporary or an on-call position. Provides technical support. Responsibilities may include computer programming or operations; research support; medical patient care; technical equipment maintenance, repair, fabrication or operation; or other technical support functions.

The Alizadeh research group studies land–atmosphere interaction using satellite observations of soil moisture, vegetation water status, evapotranspiration, and photosynthesis. The Technical Aide will support active projects on how vegetation and the land surface respond to drought, heat, and compound hydroclimatic extremes across the regional and global scales.

Duties include:

• Downloading, subsetting, and organizing satellite and reanalysis datasets (SMAP, ECOSTRESS, OCO-2/3 SIF, MODIS, ERA5, AmeriFlux)
• Writing and maintaining Python processing scripts, run on the MSU High Performance Computing Center
• Performing quality control, regridding, and time-series alignment across products with differing spatial and temporal resolution
• Producing figures, maps, and summary tables for manuscripts and proposals
• Documenting code and data in a shared Git repository so analyses can be reproduced
• Summarizing methods and datasets from the literature relevant to assigned tasks
• Attending weekly group meetings and reporting progress in writing

Experience with gridded geospatial formats (NetCDF, HDF, GeoTIFF) and xarray. Command-line Linux and SLURM job submission. Version control with Git. Coursework in hydrology, meteorology, remote sensing, environmental engineering, geography, or a computational discipline. Prior exposure to machine learning applied to Earth observation data.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, age, disability or protected veteran status.

Resume and contact information for 3 professional references. 

STANDARD 8-5

Advertised: Aug 31, 2026 Eastern Daylight Time
Applications close: Sep 1, 2026 Eastern Daylight Time

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