Senior Data Scientist – AI Grid Modeling

Builder Mindset | Techno-economic Forecasting

About Sunairio

Sunairio uses AI, probabilistic modeling, and high-resolution climate data to forecast energy supply and demand with granular, site-specific accuracy. Our core product, Sunairio ONE, generates thousands of realistic scenarios (ensembles) to surface uncertainty and extreme-event risk so that traders, operators, and developers can manage volatility, optimize decisions, and plan for extreme events. This is not weather for weather’s sake. We translate weather and climate risk into high-impact grid and market outcomes.

About You

You are a technical leader in quantitative finance, energy economics, or machine learning who is a builder, not just a researcher. You have built models of complex systems, improved them, and shipped them into production. You aren't a traditional power engineer—you are a data-first, economic thinker who views the grid as a massive, stochastic market solution.

You have a founder mindset and are driven by impact. You may not be a founder, but you operate like one.

You have:

• High Autonomy: You identify the bottleneck in a model and fix it without a roadmap.
• Commercial Intuition: You build systems that create durable value for traders and developers, not just high R-squared values on a test set.

You are:

• A Technical Polymath: You are as comfortable tuning a Transformer model as you are analyzing ISO marginal loss vectors.
• Tool-Agnostic Experimentalist: You don't just use standard libraries; you leverage LLMs and Agentic AI to accelerate data ingestion, code generation, and market sentiment analysis; but you think critically about where LLM-based AI works and where it has the risk of going off the rails.

Why this role matters

The energy transition is making power markets increasingly volatile and non-linear. Traditional structural models are too slow, and "black box" ML often fails during extreme events. The industry needs a new breed of market modeling that blends physical fundamentals (transmission, heat rates, fuel prices) with machine learning methods. You will be the architect of this bridge, turning trillions of data points into the price signals that will guide the next decade of energy investment.

Key responsibilities

• Build Market Models: Design and deploy probabilistic models for power region fundamentals (load, renewables, unit outages), congestion, and LMP.
• Innovate with AI/LLMs: Integrate Large Language Models and Generative AI to parse regulatory filings, extract features from unstructured market reports, and automate complex data pipelines.
• Bridge Physical & Financial: Work with our weather and climate team to translate atmospheric signals into market-moving outcomes (basis risk, price spikes, and curtailment).
• Productionize & Scale: Partner with Engineering to ensure models are performant, scalable, and integrated into the Sunairio ONE platform.
• Market Strategy: Bring strong judgment on what matters to a power trader or a renewable developer, helping shape the product roadmap based on market reality.

What we’re looking for

• The "Builder" Proof: Clear evidence you have built an end-to-end modeling system (e.g., a price forecaster, a trading bot, or a grid simulator), not just tweaked existing code.
• ML Fluency: Deep expertise in modern machine learning applied to noisy, real-world numerical data.
• Energy Market Savvy: A strong grasp of how ISO/RTO markets function including an understanding of how supply stacks and transmission constraints drive price.
• Modern AI Stack: Experience or high proficiency in leveraging LLMs for data extraction or code acceleration.
• Technical Toolkit: Mastery of Python (NumPy, Pandas, Xarray) and experience with large-scale data orchestration.
• Probabilistic Mindset: Comfort with uncertainty, Bayesian inference, and the nuances of evaluating distributional fidelity rather than just point-forecast accuracy.
• High Velocity: A preference for shipping "version 1" quickly and iterating based on performance rather than seeking academic perfection.

Base salary

$150K - $190k

Location

• Hybrid (preferred location in East or Central time zone)
• Sunairio is based in Baltimore, MD, and requires employees to travel to regularly-scheduled onsites at Sunairio HQ. Sunairio provides a travel stipend to cover these expenses. Relocation assistance is also available to candidates interested in moving close to Baltimore.

What we offer

• The opportunity to join an industry-disrupting startup on the ground floor–with significant equity compensation
• The focus to work on innovative solutions to problems of critical importance
• A truly collaborative team environment
• The ability to help shape company culture
• Competitive salary and incentive-based compensation plan
• “Platinum” health insurance plan
• 401(k) with company match
• Flexible vacation policy

Equal Opportunity Employer

• Sunairio is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other legally protected status. We are committed to a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace environment.