Junior GIS Engineer

Propheticsoftware; Portland, Northern (OR, KY); Hybrid; USD 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental & vision insurance

Equity

Remote / hybrid

Office stipend

In-office perks

Team meetups

Job summary

Prophetic is hiring a Junior GIS Engineer to join our Portland-area HQ, with remote/hybrid options. You will work alongside our GIS Lead to source, validate, and deploy map layers that power our nationwide applications.

You\'ll build automated pipelines, write Python scripts, and use PostGIS to store and query spatial data. This role is ideal for someone early in their GIS career who loves detail and fast learning in a startup setting.

Qualifications

• 1–3 years hands-on GIS data work or internship
• Familiarity with GIS tools and standard data formats
• Proficiency in Python for scripting and data processing
• Comfort with PostGIS — spatial queries, indexing concepts, and schema design

Responsibilities

• Source, ingest, and deploy new GIS map layers from county assessor websites, state GIS portals, USGS, FEMA, and other authoritative data sources across all 50 states.
• Validate, QA, and troubleshoot geospatial data layers — flood zones, wetlands, zoning overlays, utility infrastructure, environmental constraints, and more.
• Respond to customer-specific GIS layer requests and deploy them on tight timelines.
• Author, validate, and transform geospatial data across common formats.
• Help design and build automated ETL pipelines for ingesting and processing geospatial data from county, state, and federal sources.
• Build data freshness monitoring and alerting systems that track when source datasets are updated and trigger re-ingestion.
• Develop automated validation and QA checks within pipelines to catch data issues before they reach production.
• Write Python scripts to process, transform, and load geospatial data.
• Work with PostGIS for spatial data storage, querying, and basic performance tuning.
• Maintain and improve our GIS layer catalog, including metadata, data freshness tracking, and layer organization.
• Build and maintain documentation for layer sourcing workflows, data dictionaries, and QA protocols.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with customer success, sales, and engineering teams to understand emerging data needs and help prioritize layer additions.

Skills

GIS data

Python scripting

QGIS

PostGIS

ETL pipelines

Attention to detail

Self-starter

Tools

QGIS

PostGIS

Python

Job description

Open Position

Junior GIS Engineer

Remote / Hybrid (Portland, OR HQ) Competitive salary plus equity Full-time

About Prophetic

Real estate development is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has run on fragmented data, manual processes, and gut instinct for decades. Prophetic is changing that. We're building the AI-native platform that enables homebuilders, developers, and investors to find, analyze, and act on land opportunities from a single system — powered by proprietary technologies that process billions of data points across all 50 states. We are the market leader in our space, and our customers don't just use the product — they love it. We're not making teams more efficient. We're changing how they operate.

Prophetic is scaling fast — demand is outpacing our ability to hire, and we're just getting started. This is a once-in-a-lifetime team: sharp, low ego, deeply collaborative, and obsessed with building the best product in the industry. Come disrupt an industry with us.

About the Role

Prophetic's map layers are the foundation of every product we ship. As we scale to serve the nation's largest homebuilders across all 50 states, our geospatial data workload is growing exponentially. We need a Junior GIS Engineer to work directly alongside our GIS Lead and take ownership of the day-to-day execution that keeps our geospatial data engine running.

You'll source new map layers from county GIS portals, federal databases, and municipal websites; validate and QA them for accuracy; help deploy them to production; respond to customer-specific layer requests; and build automated pipelines that reduce manual work. You'll sit at the intersection of GIS and data engineering — someone who understands spatial data and is eager to automate everything they can. This is a high-growth role for someone early in their GIS career who has strong fundamentals, great attention to detail, and wants to learn fast at a startup that's actually winning.

What You'll Do

• Source, ingest, and deploy new GIS map layers from county assessor websites, state GIS portals, USGS, FEMA, and other authoritative data sources across all 50 states.
• Validate, QA, and troubleshoot geospatial data layers — flood zones, wetlands, zoning overlays, utility infrastructure, environmental constraints, and more.
• Respond to customer-specific GIS layer requests and help deploy them on tight timelines.
• Author, validate, and transform geospatial data across common formats.
• Help design and build automated ETL pipelines for ingesting and processing geospatial data from county, state, and federal sources.
• Build data freshness monitoring and alerting systems that track when source datasets are updated and trigger re-ingestion.
• Develop automated validation and QA checks within pipelines to catch data issues before they reach production.
• Write Python scripts to process, transform, and load geospatial data.
• Work with PostGIS for spatial data storage, querying, and basic performance tuning.
• Maintain and improve our GIS layer catalog, including metadata, data freshness tracking, and layer organization.
• Build and maintain documentation for layer sourcing workflows, data dictionaries, and QA protocols.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with customer success, sales, and engineering teams to understand emerging data needs and help prioritize layer additions.

What You Need

• 1–3 years of hands‑on experience working with GIS data, geospatial analysis, data pipelines, or map layer management (professional, internship, or academic project experience all count).
• Familiarity with GIS tools and platforms such as QGIS or equivalent open‑source GIS software.
• Working knowledge of common geospatial data formats.
• Proficiency in Python for scripting and data processing.
• Basic experience with or strong willingness to learn PostGIS — spatial queries, indexing concepts, and schema design.
• Comfort navigating county GIS portals, state data clearinghouses, and federal geospatial data sources.
• Strong attention to detail — you catch the misaligned boundary, the wrong projection, the stale dataset.
• Self‑starter attitude: you don't wait to be told what to do next.
• Comfort working in a fast‑paced startup environment where priorities shift and you'll own systems quickly.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Python geospatial libraries.
• Exposure to building or maintaining ETL/data pipelines.
• Familiarity with web mapping libraries.
• Understanding of coordinate reference systems, spatial projections, and data transformations.
• Experience with vector tile formats or tile-based map architectures.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure.
• Experience with web scraping or automated data collection from government websites.
• Background or coursework in real estate, land use, zoning, urban planning, or environmental science.
• Contributions to open‑source GIS projects or active participation in the geospatial community.

Why Prophetic

• The team. Wide expertise, sharp, low ego, and genuinely fun to work with. We have each other's backs and we celebrate wins together.
• Real ownership and impact from day one. Our customers make million-dollar decisions on our platform. Your work matters immediately.
• AI-native product and AI-native workflows. Every team — engineering, sales, operations — runs on AI tooling daily.
• Founder‑led transparency. Leadership shares the financials, the strategy, and the hard calls with the whole team.
• High growth, high demand. The product works, customers love it, and we are hiring to keep up. No shortage of opportunity here.
• Flexibility. Remote, hybrid, or in-office with a great Portland, OR headquarters.
• Self‑st

Benefits (US-based Full-time Employees)

• 100% medical, dental & vision insurance coverage for you; 30% coverage for dependents
• Competitive salary and meaningful early-stage equity
• Unlimited PTO
• Remote / hybrid
• Office equipment stipend
• In-office perks: snacks, drinks, coffee, ping-pong table, and more — plus cuddles from Olive, our in-office Doberman
• Budget for intra-office travel
• 2–3 annual team meetups in person

How We Work

These four themes are how we think, build, and lead.

• Truth — Say the hard thing. We speak plainly, flag problems early, and share what's actually going on.
• Precision — Sign your name to it. Our customers make million-dollar decisions on our data. We get the details right.
• Velocity — Speed compounds. Waiting doesn't. We ship daily and launch features every two to three weeks.
• Ownership — Own it, then solve it. We own outcomes, not tasks. If something's broken, we fix it.

Prophetic is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.