at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Springfield, Illinois, United States
Job Description
Overview
PNNL’s Earth System Science Division enables energy independence and national security through leadership in earth systems science, engineering, and decision analytics. Our work focuses on solving complex problems in the dynamic Earth system. Our interdisciplinary scientists steward a breadth of efforts that encompass research on plants to groundwater science and coastal zones, to storm prediction.
Our research focuses on understanding and mitigating operational risks at the interface of human and natural environments. This includes predicting the impacts of natural hazards and extreme climate events on Earth and human systems, along with the impacts of wildfire, flooding, sea level rise and storm surges. We focus on understanding and mitigating environmental contamination and increasing the resiliency, security and sustainability of water resources. We provide geointelligence through advanced sensing and data analytics to forecast complex system behaviors and operational performance to understand human-natural systems. This includes informed decision making and enhanced community resilience, advanced monitoring, and remote sensing of environmental systems for energy and national security. It also includes developing energy systems, including geothermal energy, sustainable oil and gas production, storage and utilization, along with carbon sequestration.
Driven by a “science-to-solutions” philosophy, we provide scientific leadership and technology to enhance national security, mitigate natural hazards and optimize disaster response. In the critical areas of energy, environment, intelligence, and defense, we deliver insights and decision support through the development of tools and solutions.
Responsibilities
The Earth Systems Science Division (ESSD) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is seeking a Sustainability Engineer to join our Operational Systems Engineering (OSE) Group. This represents a fantastic opportunity to be a key contributor to an internationally recognized research group that is pushing the envelope in operational systems ranging from hydropower and ecological systems to nuclear and border protection systems. A key focus of this position is emphasis on developing life cycle analyses. A key focus of this position is emphasis on applying and developing life cycle assessment methodologies.
The successful candidate will be comfortable working with a diverse set of research staff and project tasks, and possess the appropriate analytic, task management, and communication skills (both oral and written) to clearly define and articulate both objectives and outcomes of their research. In addition to high-quality support for clients (both internal and external), a critical part of the position is quickly and effectively developing and demonstrating skills and abilities contributing to PNNL missions and projects while working toward growth in responsibilities and career progression.
Motivated and diversely skilled candidates with extensive experience with or exposure to established and novel application of life cycle sustainability engineering and other quantitative methodologies used for evaluating, comparing, and reporting life cycle environmental, social, and economic impacts and trade-offs are highly desired. Demonstrated experience or proficiencies based on first principles in assessing infrastructure and system resiliency (water, energy, and material flows) as well as development and use of complex system models are also wanted. Wide-ranging quantitative skills and experience including the development of metrics and tools for system evaluation and comparison, modeling of complex product systems and resource flows, creation of insightful and easy-to-interpret data visualizations, and novel applications of existing methodologies are ideal.
The successful candidate will also be proficient with drafting memos, reports, and presentations of results; interacting with and briefing funding agencies; and contributing to proposals to apply and expand team capabilities. Candidates should be self-directed, proactive, and able to work independently. Must show interest in developing skill-sets to meet dynamic team and lab needs. Ability to connect and collaborate with university, industry, and Government networks is also desired.
Plans, develops, designs, and manages holistic systems solutions throughout the project lifecycle. Provides expertise in how to tailor systems engineering techniques and processes to meet project objectives within constraints. Balances systems thinking and systems engineering best practices, as needed, over the full range of technology maturity levels. Applies systems engineering expertise to define cost/benefit and risk/opportunity, develop and analyze alternatives, support decisions, and mitigate risks
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
+ BS/BA and 2 years of relevant experience OR
+ MS/MA OR
+ PhD
Preferred Qualifications:
+ Education in Environmental/Sustainability Engineering, civil/environmental/sustainability engineering or related fields.
+ Experience with environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), including attributional, consequential, economic input/output, and hybrid LCA with sensitivity, uncertainty, and Monte Carlo analysis as well as development of environmental product declarations (EPD) .
+ Comfortable working with a diverse set of research staff and project tasks, and possess the appropriate analytic, task management, and communication skills (both oral and written) to clearly define and articulate both objectives and outcomes of their research. In addition to high-quality support for clients (both internal and external), a critical part of the position is the ability to quickly and effectively develop and demonstrate skills and abilities that will lead to growth in responsibilities and career progression.
+ Lead subtasks and contributes to the production of technical reports, scientific and technical products, and journal papers in support of principle investigators and project managers.
+ Ability to develop and maintain internal and external scientific networks.
+ Establish and maintain high technical quality in work products.
+ Ability to contribute to the growth of new business development opportunities and capabilities for project and program teams.
+ Effective written and oral communication is required as well as strong interpersonal skills and the ability to collaborate effectively on diverse, multidisciplinary teams.
+ Excellent organizational and task coordination skills.
+ Experience with social-LCA, energy equity, environmental justice (EJ), life cycle costing (LCC), and technoeconomic analysis (TEA).
+ Experience with sustainability engineering tools and programs such as OpenLCA, EJSCREEN, GREET, GIS, MFA, MCDA, and IMPLAN.
+ Exposure to multidisciplinary engineering/resource economics, environmental, and justice principles and methodologies including TEA, EJSCREEN, GIS, MFA, etc.
+ Experience with programming and building complex models with life cycle and other complex, large datasets; experience in causal modeling and developing directed acyclic graphs (DAG).
+ Immediate start preferred.
Hazardous Working Conditions/Environment
Some travel (for scientific conferences, client networking, etc.) may be necessary depending on evolving project/programmatic needs and candidate interest.
Additional Information
Due to business needs and client space, US Citizenship is required.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is subject to the Department of Energy Unclassified Foreign Visits & Assignments Program site, information, technologies, and equipment access requirements.
Testing Designated Position
Not Applicable.
About PNNL
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is a world-class research institution powered by a highly educated, d
