Data Analyst Consultant - LiDAR DoT

Precision Federal has been awarded a firm-fixed-price contract by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, to evaluate 3D LiDAR and smartphone-based platforms for collecting motor vehicle traffic and roadway geometry data. The part-time consultant will perform quality checks on trip data, build roadway curve inventories, compare speed limits with safe speeds, and produce reproducible figures and tables for project reports.

Responsibilities:

• Run quality checks on incoming trip data as it arrives: completeness, GPS and sensor sanity, timestamp continuity, coverage of each site per driver
• Keep the quality-control log that goes to the Government with the dataset: what was checked, what was rejected, why
• Build the horizontal curve inventory for each site from the trip and LiDAR data: curve start and end points, radius, superelevation, and speed through each curve
• Compare posted speed limits against design-supported safe speed at each curve, working with our licensed Professional Engineer who reviews the findings
• Produce the figures and tables for the Task 3 and Task 4 reports and the final report, reproducible from code
• Join a short progress call once a month

Requirements:

• Python with GeoPandas, Shapely, or GDAL, and SQL with PostGIS or an equivalent spatial database
• Experience checking real sensor or GPS data for quality: gaps, drift, outliers, clock offsets
• Comfortable computing geometry from coordinates: distances, headings, curve fitting, radius of curvature
• Reproducible work habits: scripts and notebooks under version control, results a second person can rerun
• Clear written English. Your QC notes go to a federal research center
• Transportation or roadway geometry work: AASHTO Green Book concepts, superelevation, design speed
• Experience with vehicle telematics, naturalistic driving data, or smartphone sensor logs (GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope)
• Point-cloud experience: PDAL, Open3D, CloudCompare, or LiDAR-derived surfaces
• Prior work on a federally funded research project, or a state department of transportation