Environmental Data Specialist
About The Position
The Environmental Data Scientist supports interdisciplinary projects across water research, land stewardship, water planning and policy, and sustainable communities. This position combines environmental science, quantitative analysis, modeling, coding, and data management to help Oka’ staff and project partners better understand complex environmental systems and support science-based decision-making. The ideal candidate will have a strong foundation in environmental sciences and the technical ability to analyze, model, and interpret environmental data using tools such as Python, R, SQL, GIS, and related analytical platforms. This position will work across Oka’s focus areas to develop models, automate analytical processes, evaluate environmental datasets, support research and field activities, and translate technical results into useful information for researchers, communities, resource managers, and decisionmakers.
Requirements
- Master’s degree in Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering, Water Resources, Hydrology, Natural Resources, Ecology, Geography, Geospatial Science, or a closely related field.
- Strong understanding of environmental science principles and the ability to interpret environmental and natural resource data within the context of physical and ecological systems.
- Experience analyzing environmental, water resource, natural resource, or related scientific datasets.
- Experience using GIS for spatial analysis, environmental assessment, mapping, or development of map-based project tools.
- Experience with quantitative analysis, statistical analysis, environmental modeling, or other computational approaches used to evaluate environmental systems.
- Experience working with structured datasets and applying appropriate data organization, documentation, and quality-control practices.
- Proficiency with Python, R, SQL, or similar programming languages for environmental analysis, modeling, scripting, and workflow automation.
- Experience developing, calibrating, validating, or applying environmental, hydrologic, watershed, ecological, statistical, or geospatial models.
Nice To Haves
- Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering, Water Resources, Hydrology, Natural Resources, Ecology, Geography, Geospatial Science, or a closely related field.
- Familiarity with tools i.e. SQL, Python, or R for scripting and automation.
- Experience applying artificial intelligence or machine learning tools to environmental or scientific applications, including data analysis, predictive modeling, pattern identification, classification, automation, or decision support tools.
- Familiarity with integrating AI-assisted tools into scientific workflows while maintaining appropriate data quality, documentation, validation, and human review.
- Current FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate or must obtain certification within 90 days of employment.
Responsibilities
- Conduct quantitative analysis of environmental datasets related to water resources, watershed conditions, land management, climate, infrastructure, and other Oka’ research and community projects.
- Develop, apply, and evaluate environmental models to better understand environmental processes, assess conditions, evaluate scenarios, and support project management decisions.
- Develop scripts, analytical tools, and automated workflows using Python, R, SQL, or similar programming languages to process, analyze, model, and visualize environmental data.
- Assist project teams with the selection, application, interpretation, and refinement of environmental and statistical modeling approaches.
- Integrate environmental datasets from multiple sources, including field observations, laboratory results, GIS and remote sensing products, monitoring networks, databases, and publicly available datasets.
- Apply GIS and spatial analysis techniques to evaluate environmental conditions, identify spatial patterns, develop project tools, and support environmental modeling.
- Develop maps, figures, dashboards, reports, and other visualization products that clearly communicate environmental conditions, analytical findings, model outputs, and project results.
- Maintain organized and reproducible datasets, analytical workflows, code, model documentation, and metadata so that technical work can be understood and used by other project staff.
- Other duties as assigned by Supervisor or designee.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
