GIS Analyst or Associate GIS Specialist

Location: Richmond, California
Program: Environmental Informatics
Type: Full-time
Experience Level: Some Experience
Position Type: Permanent
Salary: $82,000 - 98,490. See details below.
Please note that SFEI cannot sponsor an employment visa (e.g., H-1B) to fill this position.

Position Description

Posted: Jan 20, 2025
First review of applications: 3 weeks after posting
Application closing date: position open until filled

Job Overview

SFEI is seeking a GIS Analyst or Specialist to join the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) team. This position will be a full-time position (40 hrs per week), under the supervision of the GIS Manager. A successful candidate will be enthusiastic, organized, self motivated, and passionate about applying technical GIS skills to address environmental problems. Duties are likely to be diverse and will require an enthusiastic, team-oriented individual. You will collaborate with your colleagues to ensure an optimal relationship between science and policy through innovative approaches to information collection, display, and analysis. A strong foundation of GIS skills is required, and an environmental science background to enable effective landscape interpretation, change analysis, and mapping is ideal.

This is an opportunity to work creatively with other GIS professionals on exciting technical challenges to address some of the most important environmental issues in California and beyond. Your immediate team will include the GIS Manager, Pete Kauhanen, and other GIS specialists, Alex Braud, and Kat Palermo. However, you will also often work with software engineers, environmental scientists, and other experts from across the Institute. This position is envisioned to be hybrid in nature (2 or more days in the office) but is not necessarily required.

GIS Focus Area Description

The GIS Focus Area is responsible for serving the Institute and external user community’s spatial information needs through collaborative and innovative projects. Its success has provided the Institute with a strong reputation for GIS excellence in spatial dataset creation, spatial tools and analysis, and evocative cartography. The GIS Analyst will work with both technology and science teams to develop and implement GIS methods, tools, and web delivery applications to support local and statewide environmental management. GIS staff work closely with SFEI’s Clean Water program on potential contaminant source distribution and analysis and the Resilient Landscapes program on wetlands mapping, landscape analyses, and resilience planning. GIS is one of five “focus areas'' of the Environmental Informatics Program which provides clients and partners with the most current technology tools available to meet their missions.

Primary position responsibilities will include:

Use remote sensing, object-based image analysis, and other advanced methodologies to further automate wetland and landscape-feature mapping to support the Institute’s aquatic resource mapping and other scientific initiatives (e.g. https://www.sfei.org/cari and https://www.sfei.org/programs/cw/emerging-contaminants)
Tool development—team-oriented code development of GIS-specific landscape analysis tools
Science-driven methods development—collaboration with SFEI and partner scientists to answer environmental management questions with GIS
Data acquisition—sleuthing out GIS datasets and/or GIS contacts from various agencies, counties, cities, and special districts
Manipulate and analyze large spatial and temporally rich datasets to investigate change over time and support monitoring efforts.
Data management—organizing and maintaining GIS data in accordance with SFEI’s data management protocols
Cartography—production of high-quality maps
Project management—tracking project progress and time management
Other duties as needed/assigned

If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this, or one of our other roles.

Qualifications

Required Experience

Bachelor's degree + 2 years of experience in a professional GIS setting and thus have the organizational and project management skills to work both with the larger GIS team and on specific tasks independently.

Required Skills

Minimum of 2 years experience with ESRI’s ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS data structures and management systems, ArcPy, and ArcGIS Toolboxes.
Strong technical capabilities in multiple GIS areas such as spatial analysis, data acquisition, data management, display/visualization, spatial statistics, remote sensing, raster analysis, and image classification.
Experience with automated remote-sensing work flows (e.g. segmentation and machine learning or rule-based classification)
Experience with applying machine learning models and foundational understanding of supervised and unsupervised classification methods.
Experience with GIS scripting/tool development with ArcPy, GDAL/OGR, PostGIS, R, QGIS, Google Earth Engine, or JavaScript programming
Experience or interest using GIS for natural resource management and monitoring.
Exceptional attention to detail and problem-solving skills
Motivation to gain and develop new technical skills
Ability to manage time effectively on multiple projects
Capability to work productively in a collaborative team setting
Ability to work independently and follow through with tasks under general guidance from supervising staff
Effective written and verbal communication skills—ability to communicate technical information to non-technical clients

Preferred Skills

Training and experience in the environmental sciences (e.g., coastal and wetland science, biology, geology, landscape architecture, and aquatic ecology) or related area of expertise
Experience with automation of GIS workflows
Experience with eCognition Software
Experience with Google Earth Engine
Experience with developing machine learning models
Experience with cloud computing and/or optimizing parallel processing for large data sets.
Recent experience with ArcGIS Online
Experience with and interest in keeping up with advancing and emerging technologies, e.g., Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA), machine learning, lidar, multispectral imagery, Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS)/drones, etc.
Interest or experience in conducting change detection analysis
Experience with the complete project lifecycle from conceptualization through requirements definition, design, development, testing implementation, maintenance, and user training as it applies to GIS related technology
Experience in photo interpretation of wetlands, flood infrastructure, or vegetation
Being able to work hybrid (2 or more days in the office)

Salary & Benefits Highlights:

This will be a full time position. The anticipated salary range is $82,000 - 98,490 for this position (Bay Area salary ranges are listed; note that salary ranges for other locations are 10-15% lower depending on location and is based on locational salary data). Salary ranges take into account many factors for making compensation decisions including but not limited to experience, education, internal equity, and organizational needs. We generally do not offer starting salaries at or near the top of the range.
Matching contributions to retirement plan (immediate vesting) (403B)
Medical Insurance: health, vision, dental with employer and employee contributions
12 paid holidays
Vacation days starting at 3 weeks
Hybrid workplace (fully remote could be considered)

About the Environmental Informatics Program

The Environmental Informatics Program utilizes the latest technology and design concepts to deliver scientific information to a wide range of stakeholders in dynamic, expressive, and cogent ways. The team specializes in managing data associated with a variety of environmental sample types and standardizing results using consistent data vocabulary and business rules, stewarding over 4 million environmental data records. Along with the environmental science staff, the Environmental Informatics team members anticipate and meet the broad water quality data needs of policymakers, resource managers, and the public. The GIS team in particular helps the public, regulators, and those who discharge into our waters understand, visualize, and imagine more effective solutions to some of our state's most challenging environmental problems.

About SFEI

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which has a 25-year track record of providing robust and innovative science to decision-makers, policy-makers, practitioners, and community members to measurably improve the health and resiliency of Bay-Delta ecosystems. As a boundary organization, SFEI operates at the interface between science and policy, recognized nationally for our ability to build consensus to support effective environmental decision-making and policy. Our mission is to deliver visionary science that empowers people to revitalize nature in our communities.

SFEI employs an interdisciplinary staff of more than 70. Our operations and IT staff are the backbone of our organization and keep everything running smoothly. SFEI has three major programs: Clean Water, Environmental Informatics, and Resilient Landscapes. Our program staff represent numerous scientific and technological fields, including chemistry, modeling, ecology, wildlife biology, landscape planning, historical ecology, geomorphology, geospatial analysis, and web development.

For more information on our mission, values, programs, and staff, visit the San Francisco Estuary Institute website.

Equal Opportunity & Affirmative Action Employer

At SFEI, we celebrate the diversity of our staff and the places we serve, and recognize the value and strength of diversity. We are committed to growing together and creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace. In 2022, SFEI developed and adopted mission and vision statements for DEIJ within and beyond our organization. We also created an action plan which is currently underway. We strongly encourage applications from women-identified people, people of color, and people with other identities commonly under-represented in environmental science. We invite you to share what you like about your professional experience as well as about yourself personally.

San Francisco Estuary Institute is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. We are committed to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, physical or mental disability, family or parental status, protected Veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

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