Geospatial Architect (part-time) (#5385)

We are looking for a Geospatial Architect to join our team!

Our Client is a weather and news forecasting company. Your mission is to architect and build the engine that powers real-time weather hazard look-aheads for drivers across Canada. You will design the data pipelines and APIs that ingest a driver’s live coordinates, map them to specific road segments, calculate the look-ahead vector (X kilometers ahead), cross-reference those segments against weather hazards (squalls, watches, wind, visibility), and return actionable alert triggers to the mobile client in milliseconds.

Responsibilities:

• Architect for Scale: Establish a production-grade, highly scalable backend architecture optimized for high-throughput spatial queries and low-latency API responses (<150ms).
• Look-Ahead Routing Engine: Develop the core traversal algorithm that takes a user's current segment/heading and projects their path $X$ kilometers forward through our existing road segment database.
• Weather Data Orchestration: Integrate real-time data streams from our GIS and Data teams (polygon watches/warnings, cumulative precipitation, visibility matrices, and wind forecasts) and index them spatially against the road network.
• State Management: Design an efficient caching and state-management layer to avoid redundant database hits for users traveling on identical road segments.

Requirements:

• Seniority: 7+ years in backend architecture, specifically dealing with high-throughput, real-time data pipelines.
• Geospatial & GIS Expertise: Deep familiarity with spatial indexing (e.g., H3, S2, PostGIS, R-Trees) and map-matching algorithms. Experience working alongside dedicated GIS data teams.
• Graph Traversal / Routing: Strong computer science fundamentals in graph theory and traversal algorithms (e.g., predicting the next sequential nodes/segments in a directed road graph).
• Event-Driven Architecture: Experience with real-time streaming tools (e.g., Kafka, MQTT, WebSockets) and low-latency caching (Redis).
• Delivery: Proven ability to rapidly stand up a robust, scalable backend architecture for an MVP within a 2.5-month window without sacrificing foundational code quality.