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Research Engineer, Field Simulation

Monarch

Responsibilities

  • Develop models that connect compound properties, formulation, release rates, and measured insect responses to field performance.
  • Simulate the conditions that matter for each application, including wind, temperature, humidity, sunlight, rainfall, and vegetation, and their effects on chemical transport and persistence.
  • Connect predicted exposure to insect movement, approach, landing, feeding, or egg laying using species-specific experimental evidence.
  • Work with chemists, entomologists, and experimental scientists to calibrate models, identify missing measurements, and design experiments that resolve the largest uncertainties.
  • Evaluate predictions against held-out experiments and prospective field trials. Quantify uncertainty and establish when a model can support a decision and when more evidence is needed.
  • Build reproducible simulation and analysis software that helps the team compare compounds, formulations, application methods, and field-trial designs.

Qualifications

  • Master’s, Ph.D., or equivalent research and engineering experience in applied mathematics, physics, mechanical or chemical engineering, computational science, or a closely related field.
  • Demonstrated experience building numerical simulations of physical or biological systems and checking their predictions against experimental observations.
  • Strong scientific programming skills in Python, C++, or comparable tools, with the ability to build reliable, reusable software.
  • A strong foundation in relevant modeling methods, such as fluid dynamics, transport processes, differential equations, stochastic modeling, or agent-based simulation.
  • Experience estimating model parameters, working with noisy experimental data, and assessing uncertainty and predictive performance.
  • Ability to work across disciplines and develop the chemical and biological understanding needed to make the simulations useful.

Desired Attributes

  • Experience with chemical release and transport, atmospheric or environmental modeling, agricultural systems, insect behavior, or chemical ecology.
  • A record of translating simulations into predictions that hold up in physical experiments, including in settings where conditions change.
  • Experience combining mechanistic models with machine learning or surrogate models to make simulation and experiment selection more effective.
  • Good judgment about which processes need detailed modeling and where a simpler model is sufficient.
  • Intellectual rigor and comfort changing an approach when the evidence does not support it.
  • To learn more, visit monarchlabs.org