Expert Data Scientist - Transmission Right of Way (ROW) Risk Analytics
- Pacific Gas & Electric
- Oakland, CA, USA
- Oct 01, 2026
Job Description
Requisition ID # 174879
Job Category: Accounting / Finance
Job Level: Individual Contributor
Business Unit: Energy Delivery
Work Type: Hybrid
Job Location: Oakland; Alameda; Alta; American Canyon; Angels Camp; Antioch; Auberry; Auburn; Avenal; Avila Beach; Bakersfield; Balch Camp; Bay Point; Bear Valley; Belden; Bellota; Belmont; Benicia; Berkeley; Brentwood; Brisbane; Buellton; Burney; Buttonwillow; Calistoga; Campbell; Canyon Dam; Canyondam; Capitola; Caruthers; Chico; Clearlake; Clovis; Coalinga; Colusa; Concord; Concord; Corcoran; Cotati; Cottonwood; Cupertino; Daly City; Danville; Davis; Dinuba; Downieville; Dublin; Emeryville; Eureka; Fairfield; Folsom; Fort Bragg; Fortuna; Fremont; French Camp; Fresno; Fresno; Fulton; Garberville; Geyserville; Gilroy; Goodyear; Grass Valley; Guerneville; Half Moon Bay; Hayward; Hinkley; Hollister; Holt; Huron; Jackson; Kerman; King City; Lakeport; Lemoore; Lincoln; Linden; Livermore; Lodi; Loomis; Los Banos; Lower Lake; Madera; Magalia; Manteca; Manton; Mariposa; Martell; Marysville; Maxwell; Menlo Park; Merced; Meridian; Millbrae; Milpitas; Modesto; Monterey; Montgomery Creek; Morgan Hill; Morro Bay; Moss Landing; Mountain View; Napa; Needles; Newark; Newman; Novato; Oakdale; Oakhurst; Oakley; Olema; Orinda; Orland; Oroville; Palo Alto; Palo Cedro; Paradise; Parkwood; Paso Robles; Petaluma; Pioneer; Pismo Beach; Pittsburg; Placerville; Pleasant Hill; Pleasanton; Point Arena; Potter Valley; Quincy; Rancho Cordova; Red Bluff; Redding; Richmond; Ridgecrest; Rio Vista; Rocklin; Roseville; Round Mountain; Sacramento; Salida; Salinas; San Bruno; San Carlos; San Francisco; San Francisco; San Jose; San Luis Obispo; San Mateo; San Rafael; San Ramon; San Ramon; Sanger; Santa Cruz; Santa Maria; Santa Nella; Santa Rosa; Selma; Shaver Lake; Sonoma; Sonora; South San Francisco; Springville; Stockton; Storrie; Taft; Tracy; Turlock; Twain; Ukiah; Vacaville; Vallejo; Walnut Creek; Wasco; Watsonville; West Sacramento; Wheatland; Whitmore; Willits; Willow Creek; Willows; Windsor; Winters; Woodland; Yuba City
Department Overview
The Right-of-Way Risk Reduction Strategy (ROWRS) team within Electric Transmission Engineering establishes a risk-based, technology-enabled approach to identify, prioritize, and resolve electric right-of-way encroachments and clearance issues. The team partners across Electric Operations, Land, Legal, Wildfire Risk, IT, Data and Analytics, and other functions to improve risk visibility, standardize processes, and support sustained reduction of right-of-way risk across PG&E’s service territory.
Position Summary
We are seeking a highly analytical and mission-driven Data Scientist to support the development of a quantitative risk analysis and predictive analytics capability for Transmission Right of Way (ROW) Risk Reduction Strategy. This role will help design and operationalize data-driven methods to quantify risk, prioritize encroachments, and predict the likelihood of safety and reliability events associated with transmission right of way encroachments.
The successful candidate will partner with cross-functional teams across electric operations, asset management, vegetation management, engineering, risk, compliance, GIS, inspection, and program management to translate field, asset, and operational data into actionable insights. The Data Scientist will build models that enable proactive decision-making by identifying where encroachments pose the greatest potential threat to public safety, worker safety, grid reliability, asset integrity, and wildfire risk.
This role is ideal for someone who combines deep technical expertise in statistical modeling and machine learning with the ability to work in complex operational environments and communicate insights to business and executive stakeholders.
This position is hybrid, working from your remote office and your assigned location at least two days a week and or based on business need.
PG&E is providing the salary range that the company in good faith believes it might pay for this position at the time of the job posting. This compensation range is specific to the locality of the job. The actual salary paid to an individual will be based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, specific skills, education, licenses or certifications, experience, market value, geographic location, and internal equity. Although we estimate the successful candidate hired into this role will be placed towards the middle or entry point of the range, the decision will be made on a case-by-case basis related to these factors.
Bay Area Minimum: $140,000
Bay Area Mid:$189,000
Bay Area Maximum: $238,000
California Minimum: $133,000
California Mid: $180,000
California Maximum:$226,000
This job is also eligible to participate in PG&E’s discretionary incentive compensation programs.
Job Responsibilities
Quantitative Risk Modeling
- Develop quantitative risk frameworks to assess the risk posed by encroachments within or adjacent to transmission rights of way.
- Define risk equations, scoring methodologies, and analytical models that estimate both:
- Likelihood of an event occurring (e.g., safety incident, reliability event, asset damage, access impairment, wildfire ignition, clearance violation, line contact, third-party interference), and
- Consequence / impact of that event.
- Incorporate multiple risk dimensions into a unified analytical framework, including:
- Public and employee safety
- Electric reliability / outage exposure
- Wildfire and ignition risk
- Regulatory and compliance exposure
- Asset damage and access limitations
- Financial and operational impact
Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning
- Build predictive models to estimate the likelihood of future safety or reliability events resulting from existing or emerging encroachments in transmission rights of way.
- Apply statistical and machine learning techniques such as:
- Logistic regression
- Survival analysis / time-to-event modeling
- Random forests / gradient boosting
- Bayesian methods
- Scenario modeling and simulation
- Geospatial and spatiotemporal modeling
- Identify leading indicators and risk drivers that increase the probability of an event, such as:
- Proximity to energized assets
- Encroachment type and severity
- Clearance deficits
- Structure condition / asset age
- Land use and development patterns
- Historical incident patterns
- Inspection findings
- Environmental and weather conditions
- Access constraints
- High Fire Threat District (HFTD) or other high-risk locations
Data Integration & Analytical Pipeline Development
- Aggregate, clean, and structure data from multiple enterprise and operational systems, including GIS, asset management, inspections, outage history, incident data, vegetation data, work management, and field observations.
- Develop repeatable analytical pipelines to support risk scoring, trend analysis, forecasting, and prioritization.
- Assess data quality, completeness, and lineage; identify data gaps and recommend improvements to enable stronger analytics.
- Partner with IT, data engineering, GIS, and business teams to improve data architecture and enable scalable model deployment.
Decision Support & Program Prioritization
- Translate model outputs into practical prioritization tools that support program strategy, annual planning, and execution.
- Develop dashboards, visualizations, and decision-support tools to help the business:
- Rank encroachments by risk
- Identify high-priority mitigation opportunities
- Forecast emerging risk hotspots
- Evaluate tradeoffs across mitigation options
- Support resource allocation and investment decisions
- Support the development of business cases and analytical narratives for leadership, regulators, and governance forums.
Monitoring, Validation & Continuous Improvement
- Establish model validation, calibration, and performance monitoring processes to ensure analytics remain accurate, explainable, and fit for purpose.
- Track model precision, recall, false positives/negatives, drift, and operational usefulness over time.
- Conduct sensitivity analyses, scenario testing, and back-testing against historical events.
- Continuously improve methodologies as new data sources, field intelligence, and business requirements emerge.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner closely with subject matter experts in transmission operations, inspection, engineering, wildfire mitigation, risk management, land/ROW, and compliance to ensure models reflect real-world operating conditions.
- Facilitate discussions to define risk taxonomy, modeling assumptions, thresholds, and action triggers.
- Communicate technical findings clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior leadership.
Qualifications
Qualifications:
Minimum:
Desired:
Work for Warriors is a no-cost employment program of the California Military Department for Service Members, Veterans, and military family members. The Veteran Staffing Consultant for Pacific Gas & Electric is Martin Rivera.
Qualifications
State
Immediate Fill
Job Reference
This is an environment that’s brimming with innovation and exciting possibilities. For over 115 years, PG&E has been a part of the community, delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy. Join us and discover the brighter future we can create – together.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric companies in the United States. Based in San Francisco, our 25,000 employees work throughout our Northern and Central California service area, stretching from Eureka to Bakersfield and from the Pacific Ocean to the Sierra Nevada. We’re ranked among the nation’s cleanest utilities and we’re driving change in the utility industry to support the transition to a cleaner energy economy.
There are approximately 24,000 employees who carry out Pacific Gas and Electric Company's primary business—the transmission and delivery of energy. The company provides natural gas and electric service to approximately 16 million people throughout a 70,000-square-mile service area in northern and central California.
Martin Rivera