Senior Researcher

Make a Difference for Climate and Equity — Join Slipstream as a Senior Researcher!

Apply your skills and expertise to make a real impact in the fight against climate change and the inequities of its impacts. We are seeking a Senior Researcher to join our Research and Innovation team at Slipstream. We are a national, mission-driven nonprofit that accelerates climate solutions. For everyone.

 

We inspire bold ideas to tackle big energy challenges. Our work spans energy efficiency, community energy planning, equitable building decarbonization, emerging technologies, and green financing. We collaborate with governments, utilities, and community-based organizations to discover, test, and scale solutions that work for real people in real communities. We are optimistic, inclusive, and ambitious about our impact—and we’re looking for someone who shares that drive.

 

Our Research & Innovation Team is a national leader in understanding the real-world impacts of new solutions for addressing climate change. We study, develop, and test the next generation of energy solutions across multiple sectors of the economy.

 

Our ideal Senior Researcher is curious, highly organized, and thrives in a collaborative, project team environment. You are an analytical thinker interested in assessing the carbon, cost, and equity impacts of different building decarbonization strategies, policies, and approaches. You want to creatively address climate change using your expertise and curiosity. You enjoy a dynamic workplace and embrace self-motivation in your work. Show us how you lead, collaborate, and bring diverse perspectives to drive better ideas.

 

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds. You are key to our success by demonstrating our values, engaging in our mission, and creating results that produce enduring economic and environmental benefits for all. While we’re mostly remote, Slipstream can only hire in select states (outlined in the application). Much of our current work is concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast. While not required, being based in these regions is a plus.

 

What You’ll Do:

• Conduct primary and secondary research of various building decarbonization strategies. Assist with evaluating energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies in buildings, campuses, communities, or regional settings.
• Communicate and deliver innovative solutions that improve communities and buildings based on data and analysis.
• Manage research and development projects and tasks, including coordinating with cross-functional teams, and reporting results internally, to clients, and to the broader industry. Responsible for all aspects of projects/tasks from inception to delivery.
• Coordinate with stakeholders to define task objectives.
• Conduct or coordinate field research to gather information and data, which may include hands-on measurement of energy, user satisfaction, comfort, and other outcomes.
• Support efforts to seek and secure new research funding, including developing proposals and collaborating with partners.

 

What You’ll Need:

• Ability to manage projects both independently and collaboratively; maintain organization amid complexity.
• Analytical thinking with the ability to solve complex technical or data problems and conduct energy and/or power systems analysis.
• Experience cleaning and analyzing data sets using a statistical or general programming language (e.g. R, Python, Stata, MATLAB)
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to engage diverse energy stakeholders including researchers, utilities, building owners/decision makers, community members, and supply chain personnel.
• Curiosity to investigate new approaches to address climate change and equity challenges.
• Ability to work collaboratively with a diverse set of researchers.
• Ability to clearly convey complex concepts, ideas, and solutions through meeting facilitation, strong report writing, and engaging information sharing.

 

Nice to Have (or What You’ll Learn Here)

• Experience building shared or production-ready analytical code (e.g. packages, microservices, real-time dashboards)
• Experience recommending designs and strategies to integrate and coordinated proven and emerging climate technologies such as efficiency measures, heat pumps, and DERs and other emerging technologies into buildings.
• Measurement and verification, and observation of energy systems through commissioning or verification.
• Experience with building design, construction, or retrofit processes and partnerships.
• Experience with energy modeling and energy auditing. 
• Knowledge of relevant building energy codes and standards (e.g., ASHRAE, IECC).

 

Experience & Qualifications

Dependent on relevant experience, the level to which a candidate is aligned is outlined below:

Senior Researcher

• Bachelor’s degree, or advanced degree preferred, in mechanical, electrical, or architectural engineering, science, environmental studies, economics, policy or professional equivalent.
• 7 years of work-related experience.

Researcher II

• Bachelor’s degree, or advanced degree preferred, in mechanical, electrical, or architectural engineering, science, environmental studies, economics, policy or professional equivalent.
• 5 years of work-related experience.