It's a little known fact that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an above average job outlook for the atmospheric sciences from 2019-2029.
The field is small, but growing with broadening career opportunities. When most people think about meteorologists, they think of television or National Weather Service meteorologists, but the reality is that most of our students work in other areas.
As examples of emerging opportunities, Amazon currently has 5 weather-related openings to expand their group of weather professionals. These openings are:
- Principal HPC Solutions Architect for Weather Modeling, AWS: Craft cloud-based weather and climate modeling solutions for AWS customers.
- Weather Research Scientist, Modeling and Optimization: Model weather’s impact on various aspects of Amazon's business, supply chain, and transportation network.
- Software Development Engineer, Modeling and Optimization: Build software systems that can help Amazon predict and manage the impact of weather on its businesses.
- Software development Engineer, Prime Air (drones): Development and deploy weather observation and forecasting services for drone delivery, and implementation of weather models into our flight simulator.
- Senior Applied Scientist, AWS: Build forecasting models to help manage our global renewable energy and storage resources using weather data as input.
These openings illustrate the importance meteorological, forecasting, data science, programming, and instrumentation skills. Additionally, candidates must have strong verbal and written communication skills and the ability to work with and across a variety of internal and external teams at Amazon.
I expect more positions like these to be coming down the pike. Numerical modeling and machine learning are transforming forecast capabilities and services in ways that will greatly benefit private industry. Over the past several years, we have passed a tipping point where the usefulness and reliability of forecasting systems can make this happen. Of my 5 most recent PhD students, three are working in the private sector. This is an exciting transformation for students in or interested in the atmospheric sciences.
