Air Pollution Specialist

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is seeking a motivated, innovative, and technically oriented individual to join our multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers. This position plays a critical role in developing, maintaining, and enhancing CARB’s emissions inventories, which support State Implementation Plans (SIPs), community health initiatives, regulatory development, and air quality planning across California.

The Emissions Inventory Section is responsible for maintaining and updating CARB’s statewide criteria pollutant and toxic air contaminant inventories. Staff work closely with California’s 35 air districts to collect stationary source emissions data required under state and federal regulations. The team also collaborates with CARB’s internal programs and local districts to gather emissions data for area wide, mobile source, and event categories. Using growth and control factors developed with district partners and CARB technical teams, the section forecasts emissions inventories to future years to support air quality modeling and planning.

To improve data quality and accessibility, the section develops and maintains applications for emissions data collection, data management, and reporting. These tools provide communities, air districts, regulators, researchers, state agencies, and other stakeholders with reliable, transparent, and user-friendly emissions data.

This position serves a vital function in the section’s work by compiling and performing rigorous quality assurance on emissions inventories submitted by local air districts and internal CARB programs. The incumbent will collaborate closely with the team’s lead forecaster to develop control profiles informed by emerging regulations and new control technologies. In addition, the position will be responsible for creating analytical tools and summary reports to evaluate emissions inventory forecasts used for air quality modeling and planning. The incumbent will also prepare standardized documentation outlining internal procedures for updating emissions inventories and control profiles. Finally, the role involves working with CARB staff, other government agencies, and academic partners to apply advanced QA/QC methods and strengthen the overall accuracy and reliability of CARB’s emissions data.

The work produced by this section is foundational to improving air quality statewide. In this position, you will directly support air quality planning, photochemical modeling, regulatory development, community level emission reduction strategies, and project level environmental assessments. Your contributions will help ensure the accuracy and reliability of emissions data used to guide California’s most important air quality and public health decisions.

The ideal candidate will have a strong scientific and technical background in one or more of the following areas: emissions forecasting, air quality, air quality modeling, emissions inventory development, stationary source emissions, or a closely related field. Strong analytical skills, attention to detail, collaborative capabilities, and comfort working with large datasets are highly desirable.

You will find additional information about the job in the Duty Statement.