Geospatial Data Engineer

OFFICE LOCATION United States #PDN #LI-REMOTE WHO WE ARE The mission of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is to conserve the lands and waters upon which all life depends. As a science-based organization, we develop innovative, on-the-ground solutions to the world's toughest environmental challenges so that people and nature can thrive. Our work is guided by our values, which include a commitment to diversity and respect for people, communities, and cultures. From a rewarding mission to career development and flexible schedules, there are many reasons to love life #insideTNC. Want to know more? Check out our TNC Talent playlist on YouTube to hear stories from staff or visit Glassdoor. One of TNC's primary goals is to cultivate an inclusive work environment so that employees around the globe have a sense of belonging and feel that their unique contributions are valued. We know we'll only achieve our mission by hiring and engaging a diverse staff that reflects the communities in which we work. Recognizing that people bring talent and skills that have been developed outside the scope of a job, we take a holistic approach to recruitment that considers life experience in addition to the professional requirements listed in our postings. Please apply - we'd love to hear from you. To quote a popular saying at TNC, "you'll join for the mission, and you'll stay for the people." WHAT WE CAN ACHIEVE TOGETHER The Geospatial Data Engineer is a critical Conservation & Geospatial Systems Team (C&GST) member in TNC's Information Technology (IT) department. This position reports to the Associate Director of Geospatial Services and works closely with other Conservation & Geospatial Systems functions to serve TNC's global community of scientists, conservationists, and GIS analysts and managers by administering modern geospatial data stores, including data lake architecture and Enterprise geodatabases, and the pipelines necessary for the ingestion, transformation, and extraction of geospatial data products within TNC's existing cloud-based systems. The Geospatial Data Engineer works closely with other data-oriented roles on the team, including administrators, scientists, practitioners, and cloud-computing and architecture teams. This position is central to geospatial data management, science, conservation, and technology at TNC. The Geospatial Data Engineer contributes to developing and delivering globally accessible and scalable geospatial data management technologies by creating data pipelines and workflows to support various conservation projects and programs. This includes assisting in developing a geospatial data governance framework to ensure conservation science and geospatial data access, use, and sharing. The person in this new position will collaborate with others on the vision and implementation of a new conservation science data lake to enhance our authoritative geospatial conservation science data offerings across our global organization and externally with our important partners. This individual will work closely with the Geospatial Operations Team in C&GST and report to the Geospatial Services team to support over 2,000 geospatial practitioners across a 7,000-person global organization. The Geospatial Data Engineer collaborates across IT teams to develop data transformation and access pipelines following cloud best practices as a foundational component of contributing to the design of a data lake and other geospatial-related cloud/SaaS platforms that the C&GST maintains in support of a broad body of geospatial work at TNC. The Geospatial Data Engineer interacts with technical and end-user audiences as a service-oriented team member, including serving on a regular help desk rotation. WE'RE LOOKING FOR YOU Do you enjoy working in an environment geared towards providing modern cloud-based technologies to support the use of geospatial data in the conservation science discipline? Are you energized by the idea of contributing to the greater go d for science and conservation in an organization working to curb biodiversity loss, support people's health, and reduce the rate of climate change on a global scale? This is an exceptional career opportunity for a highly motivated, capable individual interested in joining the world's leading conservation organization. The ideal candidate will balance experience in geospatial data and technologies and cloud-based data lake and data warehouse environments. This candidate will demonstrate expertise in the integration, extraction, and transformation of multidimensional geospatial data and an interest in being part of a developing team and technology suite in support of conservation science on a global scale. RESPONSIBILITIES: * Collaborate with C&GST, other IT Teams, and external contractors to design and implement scalable and efficient geospatial data enablement processes that meet TNC's geospatial data governance, management, sharing and spatial analysis requirements. * Design and implement database and data pipelines to ingest geospatial data from various sources, including structured and unstructured data types (raster, imagery, vector, tabular, time series, point cloud, multidimensional, etc.). * Design and implement modern ETL and pipeline processes. * Develop and implement data management/lifecycle processes, including data partitioning, indexing, and versioning, to ensure efficient data retrieval and management. * Adapt and modify processes in response to changing circumstances, including growth, and align with cost-conscious and careful project implementation. * Participate in weekly rotation of help desk responsibilities, including responding to user issues, answering questions, and assisting the community in solving their daily GIS problems. * Stay updated with the latest trends and advancements in geospatial technologies and best practices to recommend innovative and automated approaches to support the long-term stewardship of data management and access in cloud environments. WHAT YOU'LL BRING * Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, data science/engineering, geospatial technology, or related field and/or combined equivalent of education and experience * 3 years of experience in cloud-based environments, data access/pipeline development, architecture, design, and implementation. * Experience with designing, building, testing, maintaining, and automating data collection pipelines and workflow processes to support ingestion, analysis and sharing. * Experience with spatial data management principles, technologies, and platforms (i.e., data lake or related cloud-based environments, data pipelines, data governance). * Experience with SQL or related database environments in a data engineering role or related analytical role. * Experience with the suite of Esri products (e.g., ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise). DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS While we list our desired qualifications for this position, we recognize the value of diverse backgrounds and experience and support on-the-job training to develop the right candidate. * Experience with cloud-based platforms and cloud computing tools (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Amazon Sagemaker, Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena). * Familiarity with general-purpose programming languages (Python, R, etc.). * Familiarity with Earth observation/remote sensing software and tools (e.g., Google Earth Engine, other SaaS or Desktop-based programs). * Familiarity with rest APIs (e.g., Esri JavaScript). * Familiarity with open-source geospatial platforms and software (e.g., QGIS). * Experience/familiarity with help desk tasks, including end-user support. * Familiarity with project management and collaboration tools (e.g., Atlassian suite/Jira). * Excellent written and oral communication skills. * A fundamental desire to work collaboratively with others to reach collective goals.