Data Scientist & Lab Manager

The Land Use and Global Environment (LUGE) Research group at the University of British Columbia is seeking a data scientist & lab manager to support their research on global sustainable agriculture and food security. Our research group is broadly interested in addressing the challenge of improving food security for 9-10 billion people while also making the food system more environmentally friendly and climate resilient. We do this by developing and analyzing global and regional data sets and models of agriculture and the food system.

The data scientist/lab manager will have two main responsibilities. First, to help develop and manage our group’s collection of global and regional data sets, including census and geospatial data on agricultural land use, climate, and soils, and to support the analytical and programming needs of the group. Second, in a more limited capacity, to assist with general lab management, including maintaining hardware and software, maintaining website, ordering lab supplies, organizing meetings, preparing budgets, proposal writing, etc.

Candidates with undergraduate or master of science degrees in Environmental Science, Physical Geography, Earth System Science, Ecology, or Atmospheric Sciences, and with Data Science experience, are ideally suited for this position. The ideal candidate will have excellent quantitative and analytical skills, and some prior experience analyzing large-scale environmental data. Specific skills required include ability to compile, clean, wrangle, visualize, and manage large amounts of tabular and geospatial data; GIS; a solid foundation in applied statistics (i.e. regression analysis); and some basic familiarity with using remote-sensing based land cover classification data. The following software skills are required: Microsoft Excel, QGIS, database management, and programming in bash, R, and Python. Candidates should have strong communication (spoken and written) and interpersonal skills, and the ability to work independently and with a team of students and researchers. The candidate will be required to supervise undergraduate students who will assist with compiling data, and prior experience will be an asset.