AGERpoint

Director, Spatial Data Science

North Carolina, US, Durham, NC, US

Hybrid, RemoteFull time roleSenior Level, Director / Executive

About 1 month ago

About the Job

Welcome to Agerpoint

Agerpoint is reshaping how the world captures, analyzes, and manages field data, powering a more resilient food supply and safeguarding natural ecosystems. By merging advanced AI, agentic models, and data fusion, we’re building the next-generation spatial platform that delivers unprecedented insights for agriculture and environmental conservation.

Our Agerpoint Capture app transforms any smartphone into a data acquisition tool, making it simple to record ground-level truth of crops and trees. These real-time visual models sync seamlessly with Agerpoint Cloud, our AI-native data platform that integrates satellite imagery, drone surveys, field sensors, and human observations to produce highly precise, quantifiable digital twins and analytics.

From estimating yield and identifying disease to assessing biodiversity, Agerpoint’s data cloud delivers actionable intelligence that drives better decision-making for agriculture, forestry, insurance, government, and conservation organizations.

Named a 2022 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Agerpoint is charting a bold path to transform how we measure and manage the planet’s vegetation. Our ultimate goal: to enhance the quality of life for all and combat climate change by fostering a data-driven revolution in how we grow our food, manage our forests, and protect our natural habitats.

The company is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina at the Alexandria Center for AgTech - the country's first and only integrated multi-tenant, collaborative and amenity-rich R&D and greenhouse site.

As Director of Spatial Data Science, you will architect the algorithms and data pipelines that transform remote sensing pixels into actionable intelligence. You’ll build and lead a multidisciplinary team of geospatial scientists, ML engineers, and remote-sensing specialists owning everything from raw imagery ingestion to production-grade AI models that surface agronomic and ecological KPIs. Your work will fuel every product and partner integration across the Agerpoint platform. We’re looking for candidates who burn with genuine passion for Agerpoint’s mission, harnessing cutting-edge technology to secure the planet’s food supply and safeguard its natural resources.

Key Responsibilties

Set the scientific vision for how satellite, UAV, ground, and IoT sensor data converge into a unified spatial analytics fabric that scales globally
Own remote-sensing data strategy, negotiate provider agreements, define data acquisition cadences and sources, and manage petabyte-scale archives in cloud object stores and spatio-temporal databases
Lead the design, development, and deployment of ML & AI models focused on feature extraction from 2D and 3D data (lidar and imagery), using our ML CI/CD workflow as well as contributing to development
Drive research and development efforts to enhance models' accuracy, efficiency, and scalability in a production environment
Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including software developers, product managers, and subject-matter experts in agriculture and forestry, to identify customer pain points and solution opportunities
Oversee data acquisition and preprocessing pipelines, ensuring data quality and integrity for machine learning models
Drive IP creation and publication: prototype novel algorithms, file patents, and present at leading geospatial conferences
Establish data-quality & ethics governance uncertainty quantification, bias monitoring, and compliance with geospatial privacy regulations
Mentor and grow a high-performing team; foster a culture of experimentation, peer review, and continuous learning
Partner externally with universities, space agencies, and analytics vendors to co-develop models, share datasets, and unlock co-selling opportunities

Qualifications

10+ years applying remote sensing and geospatial analytics in production environments; 5+ years leading technical teams
Deep expertise in satellite & aerial imagery, LiDAR point clouds, SAR, multispectral/hyperspectral data, and their preprocessing workflows
Strong experience with tools and libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, SAM, DINO, OpenCV, and other machine learning frameworks
Experience working with 2D and 3D data sources such as lidar, camera imagery, and point clouds.
Familiarity with geospatial data processing, GIS, Photogrammetry, Neural Radiance Fields, Gaussian Splatting, and remote sensing data analytics
Solid understanding of agriculture, forestry or natural asset management applications is a plus.
Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
Proven track record delivering cloud-native pipelines on AWS, Azure, or GCP using Spark, Dask, Kubernetes, or serverless architectures
Strong programming chops in Python (plus one of: C++, Rust, or Go) and experience with modern MLOps stacks (MLflow, Metaflow, Vertex AI, or similar)
Exceptional communication skills: able to explain NDVI and graph attention networks to agronomists, executives, and engineers alike
Experience fusing in-situ IoT sensor data with satellite/UAV imagery
Bachelor’s or Master’s in Remote Sensing, Geomatics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field; PhD a plus

Benefits

Paid company holidays and unlimited PTO

Remote friendly and flexible work environment

Company paid healthcare benefits

401(k) retirement plan

Equity options for full-time employees

For employees in Research Triangle Park, NC - Access to fully equipped, EXOS-operated fitness center with on-site wellness coaches and on-site eatery

Agerpoint is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Agerpoint is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at recruiting@agerpoint.com.

Note to Recruiters:

Agerpoint does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment agencies. In the absence of a signed Agreement, Agerpoint will not consider or agree to payment of any referral compensation or recruiter fee. In the event a recruiter or agency submits a resume or candidate without a previously signed Agreement, Agerpoint explicitly reserves the right to pursue and hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited resumes, including those submitted directly to hiring managers, are deemed to be the property of Agerpoint.

About the Company

AGERpoint

Triangle, NC, USA

21-50

Agerpoint provides spatial intelligence to empower a sustainable food system and to protect natural environments. Agerpoint tools help estimate yield, spot disease, calculate carbon sequestration potential, evaluate biodiversity, and more. The Agerpoint Capture app makes capturing detailed 3D ground truth of crops and trees as easy as recording a smartphone video. Upload models to Agerpoint Cloud, a spatial data platform, to derive accurate plant metrics via Agerpoint’s machine learning pipeline. Agerpoint Cloud supports third-party data from satellites, sensors, drones, and maps. Through a combination of artificial intelligence, high performance computing, computer vision and advanced analytics, the Agerpoint platform fuses together sensor data from mobile devices, terrestrial vehicles, drones and satellites with other information and human observations to create a highly precise, quantifiable and interactive digital record to enable better decision-making for clients across agriculture inputs, food production, forestry, insurance, government and conservation organizations. Agerpoint's Know Your Carbon™ serves to provide credibility and transparency to carbon credits by leveraging Agerpoint’s unique ability to create highly accurate 3D plant models and efficiently extract physical measurements and health information using automation and AI. Know Your Carbon™ was recognized by the World Economic Forum as a winner of the Carbon Market Challenge as announced at the UN’s Climate Change Conference, COP 26. Agerpoint was also named a 2022 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. With these advancements, our mission is to improve quality of life for our planet’s inhabitants and mitigate climate change by enabling a transformational shift in how we measure and understand plants, crops and forests.