The Natural Capital Project is a partnership among Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund. We develop tools to model and map the distribution of biodiversity and the flow of multiple ecosystem services across land- and seascapes. We seek a creative and talented geographer or ecologist for a GIS programmer analyst position to advance the development, testing and application of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystem service models.
The successful candidate will contribute to NatCap’s ongoing efforts to provide process-based ecosystem service modeling in support of decision making around the world. To date, these efforts have resulted in InVEST, a tool that tracks the production and valuation of ecosystem services, and RIOS, a landscape optimization support tool for watershed services. The programmer analyst will develop, program, improve and apply spatially-explicit ecosystem services models written in Python. In addition, they will gather, create and prepare digital data needed for GIS analysis. The programmer analyst will work in close collaboration with NatCap’s interdisciplinary team, which includes scientists, economists and software engineers, to produce simple, scientifically robust models that have outputs that resonate with stakeholders and decision makers.
Our core team is located in Seattle, Washington, DC, University of Minnesota and Stanford, and we have active partners around the globe. This position will be based at Stanford. It will require extensive interaction with interdisciplinary teams and some travel.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
• B.S. and/or M.S. in geography, ecology, agricultural or natural resource sciences, mathematics, or a related field
• Expertise in GIS and geospatial analysis
• Strong quantitative skills and proficiency in the Python programming language
• Ability to work effectively on multiple concurrent projects
• Excellent communication skills
Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience working with large datasets, including raster, vector and tabular
• Experience applying or developing social and/or ecological models in the context of natural resource and/or land-use management
• Experience with both ArcGIS and QGIS
• Experience working with collaborators from diverse backgrounds and capacity to engage with interdisciplinary teams
• Proficiency in Spanish a plus
Term: One year fixed term with possible extension, contingent upon funding and programmatic needs.
Interested applicants should include a cover letter describing your experience and interest, as well as a CV and contact information for three references. More information on the project can be found at
www.naturalcapitalproject.org.
Stanford University is committed to equal opportunity through affirmative action in employment and we are especially eager to identify minority persons and women with appropriate qualifications. Final candidates will be subject of a background check prior to hiring.
