Geospatial systems lead

Full-time (hybrid/remote) 

Up to 3 months/year at projects in West Africa 

About Rainforest Builder 

Rainforest Builder is Africa’s leading forest restoration company, on a mission to restore one million hectares of degraded land to tropical forest. We bring together world-leading science, forestry, and tech, to deliver high-quality forest restoration at unprecedented scale. Backed by some of the largest companies and investors in the world, we remove millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, restore globally threatened biodiversity, and deliver equitable economic growth to rural communities. We currently operate four projects across three countries in West Africa and are continuing to expand to new areas within the region. 

Role overview 

As our Geospatial Systems Lead, you will take ownership of our spatial data and planning functionality. You will provide technical oversight of our cadastral surveying, spatial data collection and curation, and mapping and geospatial analysis. You will oversee a large operation of land surveying and drone flying, ensuring that our planning functionality is best in class and capable of scaling to management units exceeding tens of thousands of hectares.  

Currently, we have over ten thousand hectares currently under management or at a late stage of surveying, and this is set to rapidly grow as we continue to expand operations. This growth requires an individual that understands intimately the challenges that spatial data bring, and can tightly manage mapping operations at scale. This role requires an expert in surveying and data management, who is capable of overseeing a large and dispersed field operation across many sites in West Africa.  

The ideal candidate will: 

• have excellent data management and analytical skills, with significant experience working with large spatial datasets.  

Key Responsibilities 

• Own our spatial data and spatial data collection processes, ensuring that they generate high-fidelity representations of our areas under management 
• Oversee and improve our cadastral surveying operation, across large and complicated areas in West Africa 
• Data management: identify and investigate data errors and inconsistencies; work with field teams to address root causes, and continually refine our processes 
• Contribute to the development of tools and processing pipelines to handle and manage spatial data 
• Team Building and Leadership: you will support the growth and development of Rainforest Builder’s Planning teams across all projects. 

Candidate requirements 

• Proficient in R and/or Python 
• Comfortable managing large geospatial datasets and drone data, and able to identify anomalies, trace and fix errors, and build reproducible analytical workflows 
• Experience of cadastral surveying in a Global South context. You should be familiar with the challenges associated with establishing high-fidelity boundaries and solutions to these problems  
• Experience working with remote sensing datasets and drone imagery 
• Highly self-motivated, and excited by the challenge of maintaining rigorous data quality across a large field operation 
• Excellent problem solver- able to identify problems and challenges as they emerge and resolve appropriately 

To apply 

Please email simon@rainforestbuilder.com with a CV and covering letter, including the job title in the subject line. Applications via LinkedIn will not be reviewed.