Are you the person at parties shouting about how important bees, beavers, kelp or the mycelial network are to our environment? If so, read on ‘cus this might be the coolest job you ever apply for.

Biodiversity is a buzzword right now. It needs critical and aggressive support, today, or yesterday even, not tomorrow.

Thankfully, there are organisations already working on deeply detailed and technical systems aimed at preventing biodiversity loss and limiting loss in scenarios where it’s unavoidable.

These systems are integrated into companies, governments and organisations all over the world and help all to assess and understand the ecological environment they might be building on, developing, protecting or enhancing.

You don’t need to be a scientist to take on this role, all the biodiversity and ecology, scientific terminology and the rest can be taught, but you do need to find this stuff interesting as almost every conversation you have will relate to nature and biodiversity in some capacity.

So, what will you be doing?

You’ll be working heavily with data, ensuring scientists, organisations, customers, committees and all stakeholders have access to the data they need 24/7. You’ll gather requirements, design and build new features and [longer-term] take responsibility for architecture decisions, deployment and delivery, end to end.

The main skills needed are SQL / PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails and Javascript, but the RoR and SQL skills are the priority. You’ll work with lots of partners to implement your tools into their systems, work on platform improvements, debugging technical issues and more.

You’ll use your initiative to dig out information, track down the right people to speak with across large numbers or orgs. and have the “crack-on” attitude to learn new skills quickly when needed.

Skills or experience that will stand out include:
• Geographic systems, Geospatial and mapping technologies or tools – PostGIS (or any GIS), CartoDB, GeoDa, Leaflet or similar.
• Cloud experience – doesn’t need to be deep, any familiarity is good.
• ReactJS

You’ll work as a developer on whatever project is the current priority and it’s likely there will be times where you’re focusing on one or two projects while supporting many others concurrently, so good organisation and prioritisation skills will also hold you in good stead.

Some of those projects will be small and niche, others will be led externally and run for years, either way you’ll have plenty internally to keep you busy.

You’ll have support from multiple avenues but will also have a lot of autonomy. Post-probation nobody will be telling you what to do, and you’ll play a big part in shaping this role and building a team around you over the next 12-24 months.

So, if you care deeply about our planet and all the beings lucky enough to reside here, have taken steps to adapt your own behaviours and want to make a positive impact, then you should 100% hit apply!