Earth Sciences Research Engineer at Turing

Earth Sciences Research Engineer | $300/task | Worldwide Remote | 5-Week Contract

Turing is staffing a frontier AI data initiative seeking Earth Sciences experts to design realistic scientific tasks and computational workflows used to evaluate AI agents. You'll translate real-world Earth-science research into reproducible, terminal-based tasks with objectively verifiable outputs.

Domains Covered

Climate science, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, geology, hydrology, environmental modeling, remote sensing, and Earth-system science.

What You'll Do

• Design realistic, multi-step scientific tasks based on real Earth-science research and computational workflows.
• Work with geospatial, climate, atmospheric, geological, hydrological, oceanographic, satellite, and time-series datasets.
• Build reproducible computational environments using scientific libraries and command-line tools.
• Develop expert solutions using Python, R, Bash, Julia, or relevant domain-specific software.
• Create tasks involving geospatial analysis, numerical modeling, time-series processing, interpolation, forecasting, remote sensing, and environmental analysis.
• Build automated tests and objective grading criteria to validate numerical results, scientific outputs, file formats, metadata, and reproducibility.
• Validate coordinate systems, units, timestamps, missing-data handling, numerical tolerances, and scientific assumptions.
• Debug issues involving scientific datasets, geospatial projections, dependencies, performance, and numerical stability.
• Document datasets, expected outputs, edge cases, scientific assumptions, and limitations.

What We're Looking For

• Ph.D., postdoctoral experience, or equivalent advanced technical experience in Earth Sciences or a closely related field.
• Strong expertise in at least one area: climate science, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, geology, hydrology, remote sensing, environmental modeling, or Earth-system science.
• Strong programming skills in Python, R, Julia, Bash, or another scientific programming language.
• Hands-on experience with scientific data processing, numerical modeling, geospatial analysis, or time-series analysis.
• Comfortable working independently in Linux/terminal-based environments.
• Ability to build, debug, and validate reproducible scientific computational workflows.
• Strong understanding of scientific quality control, spatial/temporal data, uncertainty, and numerical accuracy.

Nice to Have

• Experience with NumPy, pandas, SciPy, xarray, rasterio, GeoPandas, Cartopy, GDAL, or similar tools.
• Experience with scientific data formats such as NetCDF, HDF5, GeoTIFF, shapefiles, or GRIB.
• Familiarity with Docker, Conda, Git, CI/CD, automated testing, or HPC environments.
• Research software engineering, scientific benchmarking, or automated grader development experience.
• Experience evaluating AI coding/terminal agents or developing tasks for AI systems.
• Publications or open-source contributions in Earth, environmental, geospatial, or computational sciences.

Offer Details

• Commitment: At least 6 hours/day, minimum 40 hours/week, with 4-hour overlap with PST.
• Employment Type: Contractor assignment (no medical/paid leave).
• Duration: 5-week contract (expected start: next week).
• Pay: $300 per approved task.