Geospatial Data Scientist

About the Position

Turn observations from space into environmental intelligence for living water systems.

HAEDES is looking for an Earth Observation & Geospatial Data Scientist to strengthen our team in Belgium. We seek someone who can transform satellite observations into trustworthy information that supports better decisions for rivers, coasts, estuaries, and oceans.

Responsibilities

• Design reproducible workflows to acquire, preprocess, quality-control, and analyze optical, radar, and other Earth Observation datasets.
• Develop environmental indicators and data products for water quality, coastal change, flooding, habitat condition, and other water-system applications.
• Integrate satellite, in-situ, sensor, model, and geospatial datasets across different spatial and temporal scales.
• Build scalable processing pipelines and services for monitoring, forecasting, anomaly detection, and early warning.
• Connect Earth Observation products with GIS platforms, geospatial databases, and digital twins.
• Define validation strategies, quantify uncertainty, and communicate the fitness and limitations of derived products.
• Translate complex processing methods and results into clear maps, visualizations, demonstrations, and recommendations.
• Contribute to R&D proposals, client projects, and partnerships while pursuing promising ideas of your own.

Requirements

• A master’s degree or PhD in Earth Observation, remote sensing, geomatics, geography, environmental science, engineering, or a closely related field.
• At least 3 years of relevant experience with Earth Observation, geospatial, and/or environmental data.
• Strong scientific programming skills in Python and familiarity with C++.
• Practical knowledge of Sentinel missions, Copernicus services, and commonly used Earth Observation products.
• Experience with satellite-data processing, atmospheric or geometric corrections, quality control, and the generation of derived indicators.
• Strong command of raster and vector data, spatial analysis, GIS, and geospatial databases.
• Experience integrating heterogeneous spatial and time-series datasets from satellite, sensor, and modeling sources.
• A sound understanding of resolution, coverage, retrieval limitations, uncertainty, ground truth, and validation.
• The ability to explain technical workflows and results to both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• Professional working proficiency in English.

Nice to Have

• Cloud-native or distributed processing of large EO datasets, including data cubes, object storage, parallel computing, or scalable APIs.
• Efficient big-data architectures and formats, such as cloud-optimized rasters, multidimensional arrays, spatial indexing, and catalogue standards.
• Google Earth Engine, Copernicus Data Space, openEO, or comparable EO processing platforms.
• Machine learning, computer vision, data assimilation, or the coupling of EO products with numerical models.
• Marine, coastal, hydrological, ecological, or blue-economy applications and the co-design of tools with end users.
• DevOps, automated testing, containerization, and reproducible research or production workflows.

How You Work

You are curious enough to explore the unknown and disciplined enough to make the result dependable. You work autonomously without working alone, expose assumptions and uncertainty, and invite other disciplines and viewpoints into the process. You combine creativity with responsibility and keep learning as technologies, data sources, and environmental questions evolve.

What Makes HAEDES Different

HAEDES blends engineering and soul: logic with emotion, knowledge with wisdom, and process with patterns. We address root causes rather than symptoms and co-create solutions inspired by nature. Our values – nature, trust, connection, creativity, autonomy, and authenticity – guide how we choose projects, work with partners, and make decisions.

• A living-system organization that adapts through co-creation, learning, and distributed responsibility.
• Freedom to pioneer and pursue original ideas, paired with accountability for data quality and useful outcomes.
• Work at the intersection of water, Earth Observation, modeling, data science, climate resilience, and regenerative design.
• A multidisciplinary international network and a nurturing culture with serious expertise, personal guidance, and room for humor.

We Offer

• A varied role with meaningful R&D and client work, plus genuine influence on our environmental intelligence and digital-twin capabilities.
• A flexible working rhythm: remote, office-based, and on project locations, with occasional travel to Portugal and international clients.
• Remuneration aligned with your experience, skills, and responsibilities.
• A personal development plan covering technical growth and self-development.
• A full-time position, in the office in Wetteren (Ghent), working in hybrid mode.

Interested

Send your CV and a short motivation explaining how you have transformed Earth Observation data into useful environmental information to [email protected]. Please use the subject line ‘Earth Observation & Geospatial Data Scientist’. Applications best received before September 30th, 2026.

We look forward to discovering not only what you have modeled, but how you think.