Director of GIS, Wildfire Data & Intelligence
Frontline Wildfire Defense
Posted on Feb 25, 2026
About Frontline Wildfire Defense
Founded in 2017, Frontline developed the first fully integrated wildfire defense system to stop the leading cause of home loss in wildfires: ember-driven ignition. The system combines exterior sprinklers, full-coverage design, and connected software for remote monitoring and response, allowing homes to protect themselves long after families evacuate or infrastructure fails.
Proven effective during the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, 96% of homes with Frontline systems survived. That success has earned top industry recognition, including Frontline being recognized as one of TIME’s Best Inventions 2025 in the Green Tech category and receiving the PCBC Gold Nugget Award for “Most Innovative Housing Concept” and the Best of IBS Award for “Best Home Technology.”
As wildfires grow hotter and more frequent, our vision is to give people the tools and strategies to live safely with fire. We’re building a mission-driven team creating real-world solutions in wildfire safety and climate tech.
About This Opportunity
As the Director of GIS, Wildfire Data & Intelligence, you will own the GIS architecture, reliability, and evolution of Frontline’s intelligence and data platform powering wildfire detection, risk assessment, and automated response.
This is not a traditional business intelligence role. You will lead systems that ingest and interpret real-time telemetry, geospatial and environmental data—turning them into signals that drive decision-making, automation, and physical system behavior.
This role is both strategic and hands-on, spanning cloud and edge systems, and includes building and mentoring a small, high-impact team of data engineers and GIS specialists.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design and development of the GIS based wildfire intelligence and data platform for ingesting and managing real-time, wildfire-relevant telemetry, geospatial, and environmental data.
- Build and maintain scalable data pipelines, services, and data interfaces supporting internal analytics and customer-facing intelligence products.
- Develop geospatial and analytical systems that support wildfire risk assessment, situational awareness, and system performance analysis.
- Collaborate closely with software, firmware, and systems teams to ensure reliable, high-quality data flows across devices, services, and applications.
- Establish best practices for data quality, validation, observability, and governance across cloud and edge environments.
- Own the intelligence platform roadmap, balancing near-term product needs with long-term scalability and evolution.
- Recruit, mentor, and lead data engineers and GIS specialists; set clear technical standards and delivery goals.
Qualifications
Must-Have:
- 7+ years of experience in wildfire-relevant or environmental data engineering, platform, or analytics roles, with at least 2+ years leading technical teams.
- Expertise in building data systems using cloud-native technologies (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker).
- Deep understanding of geospatial data and tools (PostGIS, GDAL, QGIS, or similar).
- Experience with time-series and telemetry data, including sensor or field-generated data (e.g., TimescaleDB, InfluxDB, Prometheus).
- Strong proficiency in SQL and Python, including experience with data pipeline frameworks (e.g., Airflow, dbt, or equivalent).
- Proven ability to design and maintain robust data architectures supporting real-time and batch workloads.
- Strong cross-functional communication skills; able to translate between technical and business needs.
- Self-starter comfortable in a mission-driven, operationally critical environment.
Nice-to-Have
- Experience with wildfire, environmental, satellite, or IoT datasets.
- Familiarity with data APIs and real-time service design.
- Exposure to Elixir/Phoenix, PostgreSQL, or distributed systems.
- Understanding of applied ML or analytics for environmental or risk-related data.
- Background in high-growth or early-stage technology companies.
Compensation & Benefits
- Salary Range: $160,000-$200,000 + equity
- Company-provided cell phone and computer
- Full Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Flexible time off + 14 paid holidays (yes, your birthday is one of them!)
- Work-from-home stipend to support your remote setup
- Join a high-performing, mission-driven team doing work that truly matters
- And much more!
Join Our Mission!
If you're excited about building technology that protects homes and families from wildfire disasters, we want to hear from you! Apply today and become part of a fast-growing team with purpose and innovation at its core.
Diversity and inclusion are essential values at Frontline. We know we'll do our best and most impactful work when we feel represented, and we belong. We encourage talented people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.