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/cariand 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 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)