I. Drigo

Weather — Climate — Ocean

Ilya Drigo

Oceanographer and meteorologist turning weather, climate and ocean data into products businesses rely on.

Client Solutions Lead at OpenWeather

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About

From research vessels to enterprise weather

I started in science — oceanography at Moscow State University, graduating with honours, with field seasons as a hydrometeorology engineer on marine expeditions. A Master's in applied mathematics and machine learning at ITMO University pivoted me toward AI-driven forecasting, including Arctic sea-ice prediction.

From academia I moved into industry: leading meteorology research at Windy.app, then four years at Yandex Weather as a Senior Research Meteorologist, where I led 50+ B2B projects across insurance, agriculture, and energy — from climate risk modelling to AI-powered weather products. Today I help OpenWeather's enterprise clients get the most out of weather data.

I remain active in research: most recently, a two-and-a-half-month research cruise in the Tropical Atlantic, studying deep ocean channel currents as a physical oceanographer, with publications currently under review.

8+
years in weather & climate
50+
B2B projects led
$200K+
revenue from climate risk deals
3
marine expeditions

Experience

Professional experience

  1. 2026 — present

    Client Solutions Lead · OpenWeather

    Helping enterprise clients design and adopt weather data solutions — from technical scoping and consultative sales to integration and long-term success.

  2. 2021 — 2026

    Senior Research Meteorologist · Yandex Weather

    Primary meteorological consultant and technical lead for 50+ B2B projects at a hyperlocal forecasting service with 80M+ monthly users. Launched a precipitation nowcasting product (+20% ARPU), built a CMIP6 climate risk pipeline for enterprise clients, and improved WRF infrastructure for +23% urban forecast accuracy.

  3. 2019 — 2021

    Meteorology Research Lead · Windy.app

    Led weather research for a 10M+ install outdoor app. Delivered 15+ B2B forecasting solutions with a focus on wind and solar energy, built an enterprise nowcasting system, and deployed operational WRF for high-resolution coastal forecasts.

  4. 2018 — 2020

    Research Assistant · ITMO University

    Developed a data assimilation framework combining the NEMO sea-ice model with deep learning, improving ice thickness forecast RMSE by 19%.

  5. 2017 — 2018

    Lead Hydrometeorology Engineer · Marine Research Center, MSU

    Physical oceanography lead across three marine expeditions: survey design, ADCP and CTD work, and automated QA/QC pipelines that cut report turnaround in half.

M.Sc. Applied & Computational Mathematics — ITMO University

B.Sc. Hydrometeorology / Oceanography — Moscow State University, with honours

Selected work

Research, publications and talks

Personal

Outside of work

Sailing is my main pursuit outside of work — I built an ML-based local wind forecast tool for fellow sailors. I also run a popular-science channel about the ocean, marine expeditions, and how weather forecasting works.

Contact

Get in touch

Open to conversations about weather data, climate risk analytics, and ocean modelling.

ilya.drigo@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub