Climate Data Scientist

ISS Sustainability is growing!  

Our Climate & Nature unit seeks a Climate Data Scientist to improve our existing climate and nature risk models, create new models and develop new products, and analytical tools and to support financial market participants and governments to understand, measure and act on climate-related risks and their impact on investments across all asset classes. This is a fast-paced opportunity working within ISS Sustainability Climate & Nature Solutions, a market leader within its field and highly innovative.  

In this role, you will be a topic expert in physical climate risks, climate change, climate impacts and natural hazard modelling. You will work with large, multimodal geospatial data sets, solving non-routine analysis problems and applying advanced analytical methods as needed. You will have a central role in data-driven model development efforts including requirements specification, data gathering and processing, model tuning, validation, and structuring data-driven impact stories. This includes interactions with colleagues and clients from around the globe and getting involved in several aspects of operations.  

Responsibilities:

• Leverage your deep knowledge of climate and earth systems as well as analytical expertise to contribute to the team’s data science-driven product development efforts.   

• Support the development of climate risk assessment products through work with large, complex data sets, solving non-routine analysis problems, and applying advanced analytical methods. 

• Enable smart analytics by building robust, reliable, and useful data sets that can power various analytic techniques like spatial regression, super resolution, clustering etc. 

• Support the maintenance and improvement of existing datasets, models, and pipelines, including contributing to regular data updates. 

• Evaluate new data sources and data collection methods for accuracy and effectiveness. 

• Coordinate with colleagues working on sustainability, climate, and nature risk products, and stay informed about the broader market landscape. 

• Provide topic expertise to colleagues and clients on ISS Sustainability products, including support with product use and specialist client questions. 

• Analyse regulatory requirements, public datasets, climate scenarios, and other relevant information to identify opportunities for improving existing products and developing new sustainable finance solutions. 

Qualifications/Skills: 

• Advanced university degree in atmospheric or physical sciences, meteorology, hydrology, environmental science, or a related field. 

• Experience working as a climate scientist, hazard modeller, environmental engineer, or similar, including work on developing or maintaining climate hazard models or natural catastrophe models. 

• Ability to use and interpret climate model outputs and projections, including those from CMIP datasets. 

• Experience with AI or machine learning methods and developing predictive models is an advantage.  

• Strong skills in working with large geospatial and climate datasets using Python, including libraries such as Xarray, Dask, and Rasterio. Familiarity with geospatial data formats such as NetCDF, Zarr, and GeoTIFF. 

• Working knowledge of UNIX shell and Docker is beneficial. 

• Solid data science and statistical analysis skills. Research experience or climate-related publications are an advantage. 

• Strong analytical, communication, and problem‑solving skills. 

• Ability to collaborate effectively with colleagues across multiple locations and time zones in a dynamic environment. 

• Excellent written and spoken English. Knowledge of French or German is a plus. 

• Experience in ESG or sustainable climate finance is considered an advantage.