Machine Learning Scientist – Remote Sensing

Grow with Treefera

We are a first-mile intelligence platform, delivering granular visibility into the point of origin in global ag & soft commodity supply chains - where risk, cost, performance and exposure are set.

You’ll join a global, cross-functional team that values rigour, curiosity and working close to real-world challenges. Whether your focus is AI, climate, product or operations, you’ll have space to contribute meaningfully and make an impact from day one.

If you’re excited by complex problems and want to help reshape how nature is valued in real-world decision-making, we’d love to hear from you.

Role overview

Transform satellite, radar, and LiDAR signals into precise intelligence that protects forests and fortifies supply chains. You will develop models ranging from EUDR-compliant plantation mapping, to biomass estimation and forest degradation that accelerate decarbonisation and in turn enable confident, risk-adjusted decisions at global scale.

Who you are

• You take models across the full lifecycle — research, prototyping, validation and productionisation — and you have shipped them in an industry, product or startup setting, not only in research.

• You are fluent across the modern Python ML stack — deep learning (CNNs, U-Nets, vision transformers) in PyTorch and classical methods (gradient boosting, random forests) in scikit-learn — and you pick the right approach for the problem.

• You work fluently with remote sensing data (optical and SAR) and geospatial Python tooling (rasterio, xarray, geopandas, GDAL and the STAC ecosystem), and you understand the sensor-specific quirks that matter for modelling.

• You design validation that benchmarks against reference datasets, quantifies uncertainty and surfaces failure modes — and you can explain modelling choices, uncertainties and trade-offs to scientific and non-scientific stakeholders alike.

• You collaborate by default across Science, Engineering and Product, bring domain exposure to deforestation, land-use change, biomass or supply-chain transparency, and have a genuine appetite for AI-assisted development workflows.

Desirable requirements (if applicable):

• Building on EO foundation models as a downstream substrate — lightweight classifiers, regressors or similarity search on frozen embeddings (e.g. AlphaEarth Foundations, Clay), with fine-tuning or pretraining where the case justifies it.

• Multi-modal fusion across optical (Sentinel-2, Landsat), SAR (Sentinel-1, PALSAR) and LiDAR (GEDI, ICESat-2), and time-series modelling for environmental change detection (temporal transformers, sequence or self-supervised approaches).

• Familiarity with STAC-based catalogues (Google Earth Engine, Microsoft Planetary Computer, AWS Open Data), AI-assisted development as a core part of your workflow, and working cross-functionally alongside solutions architects, sales and engineering.

What the job involves

• Design, train and evaluate models — from gradient boosting to CNNs, U-Nets and vision transformers — for commodity and plantation mapping, land-cover classification, change and disturbance detection, and biomass / canopy-height estimation.

• Build embedding-driven workflows on top of EO foundation models — few-shot classifiers, similarity search and downstream regressors.

• Design validation strategies that benchmark outputs against plot inventories and third-party reference data, quantify uncertainty and surface failure modes — producing QA artefacts (maps, plots, model cards, error analyses) that internal teams and clients can defend.

• Partner with Engineering to take models into scalable, reproducible inference pipelines across millions of plots.

• Contribute to a strong research culture across Science, AI and Engineering — reviewed code, shared tooling and active engagement with EO/ML literature.

What success looks like

Within 30 days you'll understand where one of our solution domains touches the ground — its data, models and the customers who rely on it. By 60 days you'll be building: an iteration of an existing model or a new MVP. By 90 days it's released, or signed off and on its way — already sharpening the intelligence organisations use to protect forests and de-risk supply chains. By six months you own a domain such as biomass, forest degradation or commodity mapping and are its point of call. Within a year you'll have shipped a next-generation solution, such as reforestation (ARR) monitoring, that moves the needle on climate-positive outcomes.

Who you’ll work with

You'll report to Matthew Courtis and partner day-to-day with the wider Science Team, working closely with Engineering and Product.

Interview process & what to expect

Recruiter screen (30–45 min)

Hiring manager interview (45-60 min)

Team & skills session (45-60 min)

Final cross-functional whiteboard exercise (In person). (60 - 90 min)

Accessibility: Tell us if you need adjustments, we’ll accommodate.

What you’ll gain at Treefera

• Build something that matters - join a high-growth climate-tech company applying AI, satellite data and quantitative modelling to real-world challenges across global supply chains, commodities and carbon.

• Work on complex, meaningful problems - develop systems that balance risk, resilience, compliance and sustainability, giving organisations a genuine information advantage at global scale.

• Collaborate with exceptional people - work alongside scientists, engineers and operators who are leaders in their fields, combining academic rigour with practical, cross-functional product delivery.

• Ship and grow in a high-trust environment - experiment, iterate and take thoughtful risks in a team that values autonomy, creativity and continuous learning.

• Develop your craft - dedicated space and time to grow your skills toward mastery, tackling technically demanding challenges that push the boundaries of applied AI and environmental data.

• Be rewarded for your impact - competitive compensation, equity options, meaningful benefits, and the opportunity to help shape the future of AI-powered risk and environmental intelligence.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Bold solutions come from diverse teams. Please refer to our DEI & EEO commitment below. If you need any accommodation during the application process, we’re here to support you.

Learn more about how we think and build

Many of our engineers, scientists and product leaders share their thinking publicly. Explore the Treefera blog for technical deep dives, research and product perspectives.

Privacy notice

By applying to Treefera, you consent to the processing of your personal data in line with our Privacy Notice.

Treefera is an equal opportunity employer. We believe the diversity of our people is as vital as the diversity of the ecosystems we work to protect, and we are committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds irrespective of race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, pregnancy, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request.