Geospatial Data Scientist/Machine Learning (ML) Engineer

Who we are

AKTEK Inc offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) and intelligence-as-a-service (IaaS) which enables public and private sector clients to capture risk and operation-related information from internal and external sources and produce accessible and visually informative situational dashboards for timely decision-making support. This is increasingly essential in volatile, high risk business environments.

AKTEK was founded in 2016 and has clients in North America, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Latin America. Among other things its technology helped:

• International aid projects in North Africa to better understand the political economy of their operating environments via dynamic stakeholder mapping;
• Security agencies in the Horn of Africa to combat piracy via bespoke information management and communication systems;
• Governments in Europe and Africa monitor progress on counter-terrorism strategies’
• Energy companies in Latin America navigate their changing operational contexts with big data fusion, both in environmental and socio-political terms.
• Major retailers and rail operators in the USA combat organized crime.

Requirements:Technical Core

• Academic background in a Technical Field, Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent.
• Strong background in data science, machine learning, and geospatial analytics with a minimum of 3 years experience.
• Comfortable working with external APIs into back-end data pipelines, from geospatial services (GoogleMaps API, OpenStreetMap, ArcGIS, etc.) as well as LLM APIs.
• A solid mastery of Python and geospatial libraries such as GeoPandas/Shapely together with hands-on machine learning experience (scikit-learn, PyTorch or similar).
• Experienced in handling large datasets and designing efficient, scalable algorithms to process them.
• Familiarity with GIS tools such as QGIS/ArcGIS and Google Earth, including programmatic processing of common geospatial formats (KML/KMZ, GeoJSON, shapefiles etc.).
• Comfortable working with AWS cloud services.
• Demonstrated expertise in developing anomaly detection algorithms, preferably applied to geospatial data.
• Strong command of the English language and ability to work with remote teams.
• Autonomous and interested in self-growth.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to think analytically.

Strong Plus

• Previous Business Intelligence experience.
• Previous startup experience either as a founder or early employee.
• Foreign language fluency (i.e., Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc).

How you work

• Direct communicator. Says what they mean, asks when unclear, no ceremony.
• Ability to adapt to work with teams in different timezones (GMT-4, GMT+2) when required.
• Autonomous and can take an ambiguous problem and drive it to a shipped solution.
• Understand the codebase before assuming, and leave it better than they found it.
• Security-conscious by default.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and develop algorithms tailored for detecting security anomalies within geospatial data, emphasizing the identification of potential threats and risks.
• Apply advanced statistical modeling, machine learning techniques, and spatial analysis methods to uncover security-related patterns and outliers in large-scale geospatial datasets.
• Conduct thorough cleaning, preprocessing, and integrating geospatial data from diverse sources, prioritizing data quality and integrity to enhance security analysis accuracy.
• Implement scalable and efficient algorithms to optimize anomaly detection capabilities from big geospatial data (trillions of data points available for training).
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to understand project requirements thoroughly, ensuring that technical solutions effectively address security concerns.
• Collaborate with the development team to integrate security detection algorithms into AKTEK iO and AKTEK iQ, ensuring seamless integration and interoperability.
• Utilize cloud-based technologies throughout data and machine learning product development, with hands-on experience in implementing processes for data wrangling, assimilation, and standardization in production.
• Demonstrate proficiency in code versioning, automation, and workflow orchestration tools such as Github, and understand data warehousing concepts such as data migration and integration in Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud or similar platforms.
• Exhibit excellent debugging and code-reading skills alongside documentation and structured programming practices to support sustainable development.
• Ability to articulate challenges and solutions in both technical and business terms, fostering excellent working relationships at all organizational levels.

What we offer:

• A fair compensation package, including 37 vacation days and a high level of work flexibility.
• A culture built around treating people like adults. When something's on fire we deal with it; when it's not, we don't manufacture urgency.
• People over process. We keep rules to the minimum that actually helps, assume good faith and competence, and give autonomy to match.
• Broad ownership and a flat, technically dense team.
• Real architectural influence, your decisions ship.
• Remote-friendly, with teams in 2 time zones.