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Neara is building physics-enabled digital twins of electricity grids using advanced machine learning to help utilities understand infrastructure risks and optimize resilience investments. As Principal Research Scientist - Risk, you will lead Neara's applied research function focused on system resilience, reliability, and policy.
You will define the research agenda, develop rigorous statistical and decision models, and translate findings into actionable tools and recommendations for utilities managing billions in capital expenditure. Using network-scale structural, loading, and contextual data across overhead electrical systems, you will build generalizable models of asset failure, determine the value of additional data and inspections, and design decision frameworks that quantify operational and economic consequences of resilience investments.
Key responsibilities include: building and leading the applied research function for infrastructure risk; directing a team of researchers and establishing standards for risk modeling, uncertainty quantification, and decision-making; developing predictive models for equipment damage, vegetation failure, outage likelihood/duration, and wildfire-related risk; designing decision models for asset replacement, vegetation management, and network redesign; and quantifying the value of data through empirical and analytical methods.
You will have a PhD in statistics, applied mathematics, physics, computer science, operations research, engineering, or equivalent research record. You must demonstrate evidence of independently defining and leading substantial research programs as a group leader or industry principal, with influential publications, patents, or production systems. You bring extensive experience in probabilistic modeling, uncertainty quantification, model validation, scientific computing, and decision-making under incomplete information. Relevant domain expertise includes insurance/catastrophe modeling, weather prediction, climate hazards, power system outages, or reliability engineering.
Neara offers competitive compensation with significant equity, access to unique network-scale utility data unavailable elsewhere, freedom to define the research modeling function, a central role in shaping product roadmap and analytical standards, and flexible working arrangements.
