Graduate Geospatial Data Scientist: Satellite Analytics

Unitec; Sydney; On-site; AUD 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

The Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney is seeking a Graduate Researcher in Geospatial Analysis and Data Systems. This 12‑month fixed‑term role focuses on building research infrastructure and satellite analysis pipelines while developing IEP's internal data platform.

You will work with the Chief Research Officer and collaborate with regional offices to advance peace and development research using Python, SQL, and cloud tools.

Qualifications

• Master's degree or higher in a quantitative field. Exceptional candidates with an undergraduate degree will be considered.
• Strong programming ability in Python including pandas and NumPy.
• Working knowledge of SQL and PostgreSQL; experience with relational databases preferred.
• Solid understanding of statistics and quantitative research methods.
• Ability to scope loosely defined problems and deliver working results with limited supervision.
• Clear written and verbal communication, and interest in peace, conflict and development research.

Responsibilities

• Scope, design and prioritise satellite analysis projects in partnership with the Chief Research Officer.
• Ingest, preprocess and manage satellite imagery and derived products (optical, SAR, night-time lights).
• Develop and validate methods to extract peace- and development-relevant measures from imagery; implement change detection and land-use classification.
• Build reproducible processing pipelines and document methods for publication.
• Produce analysis, figures and written findings for IEP reports and partner deliverables.
• Ingest, clean, harmonise and document datasets in the internal database; maintain schema and codebooks.
• Maintain and improve the MCP connector and tooling for data access by researchers and AI systems.
• Support automated pipelines behind indices and recurring publications; manage deployments on Azure; build internal AI workflows.
• Collaborate with researchers and communications team; stay informed on remote sensing, ML and AI tooling.

Skills

Python programming

Geospatial analysis

Statistics

Education

Master's degree or higher in computer science / data science / geography / statistics / economics or related field

Tools

Python (scientific stack)

PostgreSQL

GDAL / rasterio / GeoPandas

QGIS

Job description

The Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney is seeking a Graduate Researcher in Geospatial Analysis and Data Systems. This 12‑month fixed‑term role focuses on building research infrastructure and satellite analysis pipelines while developing IEP's internal data platform.

You will work with the Chief Research Officer and collaborate with regional offices to advance peace and development research using Python, SQL, and cloud tools.