Environmental Monitoring & Data Specialist – GIS/UAV

Nelson City Council; Nelson; On-site; NZD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance subsidies

Wellbeing leave

Professional development

Employee benefits

Job summary

Nelson City Council is leading a major transformation and seeking a Forest Transition & Hill Country Reserves data specialist. You will design monitoring frameworks, manage GIS and remote sensing workflows, and build dashboards to convey trends to stakeholders.

You will apply statistics and scripting in R/Python, with UAV experience, to support forest reserves and wider environmental work in a multidisciplinary team. The role is on-site in Nelson.

Qualifications

• A tertiary qualification in environmental science, ecology, geography, data science, statistics or related discipline (postgraduate study or equivalent specialist experience is an advantage).
• Experience designing and implementing environmental monitoring and evaluation systems in land management, conservation, forestry or natural resource settings.
• Advanced GIS skills with ArcGIS or QGIS; hands-on UAV/drone experience and remote sensing knowledge.
• Strong statistical and scripting skills in R, Python or similar.
• Experience building dashboards and data visualisation tools; capable of clear reporting.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement environmental monitoring frameworks including field measurements, remote sensing and UAV surveys.
• Own and operate the programme's spatial data infrastructure, GIS workflows and mapping.
• Apply advanced statistics to identify trends and inform adaptive management.
• Build data pipelines, dashboards and visualisation tools for diverse audiences.
• Prepare monitoring, governance and funding reports for regulators and leaders.
• Ensure data quality standards and audit readiness across datasets.
• Provide technical input across related programmes including methodology development.

Skills

GIS skills

Dashboard development

Programming (R/Python)

Data analysis

Data quality & QA

Driver licence

Education

Tertiary qualification in environmental science, ecology, geography, data science, statistics or related discipline

Tools

ArcGIS

QGIS

UAV/drone

Job description

Nelson City Council is leading a major transformation and seeking a Forest Transition & Hill Country Reserves data specialist. You will design monitoring frameworks, manage GIS and remote sensing workflows, and build dashboards to convey trends to stakeholders.

You will apply statistics and scripting in R/Python, with UAV experience, to support forest reserves and wider environmental work in a multidisciplinary team. The role is on-site in Nelson.