Soil Scientist

About The Role

Yard Stick is looking for a Soil Scientist with Pedometrics expertise to help us combat climate change with soil. You will ensure that high-quality proximal sensing principles are integrated across all Yard Stick functions, supporting our mission to replace lab analysis of soil carbon with in situ spectroscopy. The ideal candidate is a soil scientist with experience in both soil spectroscopy and pedology with a combination of field work, lab work, and data processing methods.

On a typical day, our field team is out collecting data on farms, taking soil cores and spectral readings. This data is ingested by our data pipeline and transformed into carbon stock estimates through our evolving modeling architecture. You will provide the pedometric and soil science domain knowledge to advise our hardware team on building our spectroscopic soil probe, our software team on designing soil sampling projects, and our data science team on building robust carbon stock predictions from spectral data.

This is a dream job for a soil scientist with a background in proximal sensing and pedometrics who enjoys designing and running end-to-end soil spectroscopy experiments to push the boundaries of vis-NIR soil spectroscopy and SOC quantification.

Yard Stick is a remote-first company and the team is distributed around the U.S. If you want to be part of engaged and multidisciplinary research teams at a rapidly-growing startup with literal planetary-scale impact, you will thrive at Yard Stick.

We’d like to hire this person to start ASAP.

Responsibilities

• Leverage soil domain knowledge to support Yard Stick’s spectroscopic hardware and modeling needs.
• Design and run end-to-end in situ soil spectroscopy experiments to contribute to our novel spectral soil probe R&D in collaboration with Data Science and Hardware.
• Enable SOC measurement and prediction leveraging spectroscopy informed pedometric techniques.
• Assist with determining the suitability of new spectral probe projects based on soil data.
• Assist with the development and refinement of methods and best practices for the measurement of SOC, IC, bulk density, etc., via conventional laboratory analyses.
• Liaise with the customer success team to answer soils questions. Help build relationships with laboratories, industry, and academic partnerships.

Qualifications (Must Have)

• Advanced degree or comparable expertise in soil science and pedology. Whether or not you have an MS or PhD, you have the expertise of one. You have a working understanding of how soils vary across a landscape, ecosystems, and farming systems.
• Pedometrics and Proximal Sensing Expert. You have 2+ years of experience with pedometrics and proximal sensing with a focus in spectroscopy.
• Stats and programming experience. You are no stranger to statistical and modeling techniques (Linear Regression, Partial Least Squares, Random Forest, Neural Networks, etc.). You are competent in Python or R. You can wrangle, clean, and leverage R and/or Python ecosystem packages to visualize and analyze large datasets to drive insights.
• Research & design foundation. You show demonstrated experience with experimental design. You are capable of creatively and collaboratively approaching novel problems.
• Soils laboratory experience. Having spent at least 1+ year(s) in a soils laboratory; you have a strong framework for the fundamentals of soil laboratory methods.
• Ability to leverage geospatial data. Proficiency with geospatial data, mapping, pathing, and public sources of such data (SSURGO, GSSURGO, etc.) and command of tools (QGIS, geopandas, etc.) to manipulate such data.
• Passion for climate impact and enthusiasm to learn, teach and collaborate!

Qualifications (Nice To Have)

• Project Management Experience. You have experience spinning up and executing long term projects. You know how to coordinate with a team to see a project to completion.
• Ability to communicate Yard Stick’s scientific approach to multiple audiences. You have demonstrated experience presenting to audiences of diverse technical backgrounds.
• Experience collaborating on publication strategy. Ability to take collaborative ownership of our publication strategy, working with our industry and academic partners to publish on themes relevant to Yard Stick’s spectroscopic probe research and design.

Compensation and Other Details

Market salary and equity commensurate with expertise. Directionally, we expect a salary in the range of $135,000 to $175,000. We benchmark to 75th percentile of high-growth US tech compensation via Pave, the single largest compensation benchmarking database in the world.

We offer health, dental, and vision insurance via Justworks, our benefits and payroll provider. We contribute 80% of base healthcare plan premiums (regardless of employee plan type (e.g. single vs. family) and 50% of a base dental plan, as well as offer additional contributions to HSAs for employees who select eligible high-deductible plans.

We provide unlimited PTO, unlimited sick leave, 6 weeks paid primary caregiver leave, and 4 weeks paid secondary caregiver leave (flexible as to format, eligibility includes surrogacy and adoptive contexts).

We offer to extend post-termination exercise periods to 10 years when you leave the company so you don’t get screwed out of your options.

We’ll buy you a computer and provide a work-from-home reimbursement to use how you please.

Additional benefits include One Medical, Health Advocate, and Talkspace memberships and a company-sponsored 401k.

This role can be based anywhere in continental U.S. time zones. We have no specific working hours except to “collaborate excellently” within teams - that typically requires overlapping with your teammates at least a few hours per day. (If resident in the U.S., then U.S. work authorization is required.)

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Yard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science. Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to leave it better than we found it.

Consistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we speak up about these issues, and we support emerging solutions and relevant policy efforts. We also publicly highlight the risk of further racial discrimination in emerging agricultural legislation and in press coverage ensure that the discrimination in past and present US agriculture is part of the conversation right alongside more typical topics like who our customers are, or how our tech works.

Regarding hiring and culture, we work to create a work environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and mistake-making is welcomed.