What country do you live in? I work at a climate research institute and have connections all over. I could perhaps put you in contact with a local research team.

Sadly, I'd say that a lot of current research tools are pretty shoddy when it comes to implementation. Not that they give incorrect results, more-so that there is no way to really interop systems with any ease. No standards, only a small culture of open source etc etc. Having a software engineer on speed dial to consult with when designing and implementing new frontier research tools would be of immense help in my opinion.