Sr. Data Scientist – Traffic Simulation and Street Optimization

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Esri is seeking a Sr. Data Scientist to advance traffic simulation, street optimization and Urban Digital Twins from its AI Prototypes Team in Zurich. You will design, implement and deploy simulation and inference services at macro to micro scales, lead engineers, shape product strategy with Product Management, define data requirements and licensing, manage lifecycle and documentation, and represent the team at events and in publications. The role requires 5+ years of C++ and/or Python, R&D in multimodal traffic systems, strong ML, cloud and GIS expertise, and Swiss work authorization. If you don’t meet every preferred qualification, apply anyway and tailor your application to show scalable pipelines, MLOps, leadership and cross functional collaboration.

Overview

Utilize your expertise in traffic simulation, street optimization, Urban Digital Twins, Deep Learning research and solutions to impact hundreds of thousands of users! We are seeking a Sr. Data Scientist to join our global AI Prototypes Team and push the frontiers of simulation and artificial intelligence to develop innovative traffic optimization tools for AI-assisted urban planning and beyond. This is a great opportunity to join research-oriented team that works on SOTA ideas, architectures and implementations, publishes its research results and contributes to development of next-gen Esri software.

Responsibilities

• Drive the design, implementation and deployment of traffic simulation and street optimization products and services.
• Lead a focused group of software development and product engineers.
• Design efficient architectures and develop on top of existing traffic simulation solutions: macro, meso, micro scales:
• Public-facing, secured and scalable Simulation/Inference-as-a-Service cloud offerings
• MLOps and CI, guide numeric studies requirements & implementations
• Security, Federation, Billing integration
• Work with Product Management on product offering strategy.
• Defining requirements for training and inference datasets.  Working with legal team on validating licenses and data’s acceptable usage.
• Defining product/service lifecycle: versioning, synchronization of release cycle with partner-teams, backward compatibility, reviewing documentation.
• Represent Esri and the team at internal, international, and third-party scientific and industry events. Do presentations, lead and contribute to scientific publications, podcasts, write blogposts and journal articles.
• Stay current on latest SOTA developments in traffic simulation, street optimization & generation, generative neural networks across multiple domains: graphs, raster, meshes & GS, point clouds, VLM/LLM, foundational geospatial models, etc. Collaborate with other researchers and developers within and across the teams throughout the R&D process.
• Solve and articulate complex problems with design, development, and user experiences.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software development experience working with C++ and/or Python
• Demonstrated experience with R&D in multimodal (vehicular, pedestrian, public transportation, robotics, etc.) traffic simulation and optimization at macro, meso and macro levels
• Knowledge of and willingness to continue developing expertise in the following areas:
• Traffic Simulation & Optimization: Traffic simulation packages; ML-based optimization methods
• Machine Learning & AI: PyTorch; GANs; Graph Neural Networks; autoregressive and sequence-to-sequence models; foundational LLMs and VLMs; multimodal shared embedding models
• Software & Infrastructure: Ubuntu; Docker; cloud computing and model deployment/serving
• GIS & 3D Modeling: CityEngine; ArcGIS Pro; ArcGIS Server; geoprocessing services
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills and research experience in relevant fields
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, mathematics, robotics, remote sensing, computer vision or a related field
• Existing work authorization in Switzerland

Recommended Qualifications

• Scalable CPU- and GPU-based processing of large volumes of spatiotemporal data
• NVIDIA RAPIDS, NVIDIA Kaolin, PyTorch Geometric
• Leading roles in research of software development groups
• Master’s degree or higher in computer science, data science, mathematics, robotics, remote sensing, computer vision or a related field

Our Zurich team enjoys:

• Free coffee, tea, and soft drinks
• Fun team activities
• Competitive salary
• 40-hour work week
• Flexible working hours
• Dynamic, fast-growing international team

#LI-JO1

The Company

At Esri, diversity is more than just a word on a map. When employees of different experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and cultures come together, we are more innovative and ultimately a better place to work. We believe in having a diverse workforce that is unified under our mission of creating positive global change. We understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion is not a destination but an ongoing process. We are committed to the continuation of learning, growing, and changing our workplace so every employee can contribute to their life’s best work. Our commitment to these principles extends to the global communities we serve by creating positive change with GIS technology. For more information on Esri’s Racial Equity and Social Justice initiatives, please visit our website here.

If you don’t meet all of the preferred qualifications for this position, we encourage you to still apply!

Esri is an equal opportunity employer (EOE) and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you need reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please note that only those inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this e-mail address.

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