Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services.

You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other developers, most of whom seem to have gone into it for money and don't seem to care whether or not their labor is doing anything to benefit society.

Good work is still worth doing of course. You just have to count the work itself as one of the benefits.

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."

Yes there are jobs and yes the non-profit industry needs your talents. Software jobs in the industry fall into one of 4 buckets in my experience. Don't expect much career growth or pay. Most of the work is in support of fundraising. Be willing to work at a vendor that serves the non-profit industry.

- Web development. Nonprofits need websites. Sometimes they may have a dev on staff, usually they at least have a digital director that can work with devs at web dev vendors. These vendors are usually solely focused on the non-profit market.

- CRM. Non-profits fundraise and they need people to manage the donor database. Usually this is bought from a vendor that specializes in non-profit CRM and those vendors also have devs/DBAs.

- IT. Non-profits need IT to manage networks, phones and equipment. Often they work with IT vendors.

- Devs for conservation work. This is more rare. Still, some non-profits have staff scientists, GIS people, and devs to build out conservation tools, such as data collecting apps, data visualizations or other things. This is rare because most non-profits are trying to convince the government to do the science because the government has much more money and power to recruit. It's rare and maybe a bit of a vanity project to do any science out of the non-profit, though there are a couple of groups that do that.

Check out https://enviro.work! I'm the founder and created the site because I felt similarly to you. Aligning personal values and your career is a great feeling

Check out Tech Jobs for Good: https://techjobsforgood.com/?q=&impact_areas=Environment&imp...

Big NGOs also need technical people, too. Check out the Humane Society, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Compassion in World Farming, etc. They aren’t going to be the highest paying jobs and there are all sorts of downsides but it’s a way to use your skills to make a difference in the world.

Not exactly conservation, but there's plenty of computational work (and funding!) in plant biology.

I do web development and data engineering for plant phenomics automation in a plant bio lab. Crop optimization (e.g., for abiotic stress resistance, reduced fertilizer requirements, atmospheric carbon sequestration, yield) basically requires digital surveillance infrastructure on the same scale we've (regrettably) developed for humans, except for plants. Nobody really understands how phenotypes develop as a function of genetic, physiological, and environmental factors; but we need to if we want to maintain the viability of agriculture in the face of climate change etc.

You won't get paid like you would in a more traditional software development position, but it's enough to live on. Let me know if you'd like more information.

Your website says you studied science and have built software for spreadsheets and for 3D printing.

I work with oceanographers. There are many who get by with rudimentary programming skills but love the help of developers who can help them build tools to analyze and disseminate their data. They love spreadsheets because they don't know how to make databases.

Having mechanical or electrical engineering or CAD skills helps them design enclosures for instruments, having software skills helps them add autonomy.

However it is not a field where, at least as I've seen, engineers have free rein to improve processes simply for the sake of improving them.

You are right that research funding is tight and in most of the world it is getting tighter. Right now many projects are burning through funds while scientists babysit their kids; the research vessels are only now trying to resume operation.

A few years ago Bret Victor wrote a long and wonderful essay lamenting the lack of attention to climate change in the tech industry. No specific job opportunities, but it's a wonderful read about how technologists can contribute to solutions.

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

I don’t know of any opportunities, but if anyone’s taking ideas for products in this domain then I would like an app or website that links volunteers with animal shelters, farmstays and other places that could use a few extra hands.

It could be like a combination of Airbnb and Couchsurfing etc. that serves a specific niche.

There is this development company that’s doing good work (the “improve people’s live in developing country kind of development”):

https://catalpa.io/work-with-us/

They are based in East Timor and were founded by an Aussie and an American (U.S.) and they allow remote work.

Start investigating biodiversity informatics. There are a lot of different aspects in this space: genomics, georeferencing, image processing for feature extraction, etc, as well as typical distributed systems infrastructure.

Some tangentially relevant observations based on volunteering at a raptor conservation trust in the UK.

The trust maintains a visitor park that provides bird displays and experience days for the general public. The gate takings and donations fund conservation activities in the UK (raptor nest boxes, bird hospital, bird surveys) and overseas activities (e.g. reducing poisoning of wild birds by game poachers). The Trust itself is very much an outdoor organisation, with key staff supporting bird care and site infrastructure. There is a small back office that supports ops, marketing and merchandising, using COTS software. Academic research is conducted but in conjunction with local universities, which is where data crunching, etc, happens. There are a small number of on-site student placements, primarily for those in biology / zoology courses, and the placement activities seem fairly practical in nature. I suspect that most similar organisations follow a similar pattern, with a relatively small COTS software footprint and a focus on practical tasks rather than software development / data analysis.

That said, I started volunteering to support an office-based marketing function: management of a massive photo library and video editing to support marketing and outreach functions. After six months of doing this, COVID-19 happened and most office staff started WFH, with office-based volunteering suspended because it involves hot-desking. When the park started to reopen, I switched to COVID-related activities such as queue management (‘space marshal’) and cleaning. Although some tasks are menial, I’ve learned much more about how the trust works on a daily basis and I’ve got to know the key bird staff much better.

One of my key insights, as an ex-software professional, is how much I didn’t know about how conservation actually works, and how specific conservation organisations actually operate. But getting hands-on with some of the less glamorous tasks is a good apprenticeship and a way of building trust in the industry, if you have a long-term interest in directly supporting conservation.

Bay Area listing service, world scope?

http://www.greenjobs.net/

ps- contact them and help with the cert!

Find a grad student working on research projects in the field. Every area of focus will have different requirements but almost all wildlife related field work involves some form of data entry that involves transfer from data in a notebook to excel or some CAD program. Challenges include no access to cell data, wet environments, battery management, etc. That being said, if it cuts down on tedium, most researchers will find a way to pay for it.

I've seen a plant identification app disrupt the process of species identification with field guides. I suspect that there are a lot of tedious classification projects that professors assign to undergrad researchers (find photos with wildlife) that can be entirely automated.

There are several startups working on conservation/anti-poaching initiatives using image recognition and/or drones.

https://airshepherd.org/

https://wildlifeprotectionsolutions.org/

https://observer.com/2017/05/artificial-intelligence-can-sto...

I applied to and was interviewed for a non-profit in the area that serves to connect volunteers with non-profits that need their help. Maybe they just really didn't like me in the interview (I didn't get that impression at all) but even offering my senior software developer skills for free to any non-profit, I have not heard back with anyone wanting my help and it's been months.

https://oceanmind.global/careers/

I'm about to start at Optimal (in London). It's not exactly conservation, but I like to think it's not far from it. Some details on the Who's Hiring post [1]. Best of luck otherwise.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23702401

I wouldn't say I "write software" but I have a computing job in the field of animal/landscape ecology research with a pure CS background. I guess I'd say it's part scripting ETL type jobs, some parallel processing stuff, and ... I guess I'll call it DevOps to keep it short.

Make friends with people in national-level government organizations (whatever would be most like USGS wherever you live) or university "geomatics" type people. A good start would be those involved with remote sensing (satellite [radar or optical]/drone/other sensors). These are the people that know of or are sitting in these types of jobs.

If you want a web dev type job find a way to get experience with scripting for ArcGIS Portal.

It depends on the country, probably.

I would suggest you to assure first a well paid job and use your free time for volunteer activities. Nobody should be doing science before 50 Yo. Not at this moment when postdocs are being paid 300 euro/month. Is committing economical suicide and starting a family first and having kids should be your priority.

About oceanography. If you can read spanish (if not, you can always google-translate it) you may find interesting this recent piece of news.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-06-30/dimite-la-cupula-del-m...

Your mileage may vary

Not sure about preserving nature and animals directly, but there are lots of software jobs in clean energy (I'm hiring SWEs for Kevala right now). These could indirectly have a big impact on preserving nature via slowing climate change.

If you’re in the UK look at SMRU. http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/

active group, good work, and they’re a semi-commercial autonomous wing of st. andrews.

Remote sensing is being used as a tool to help fight deforestation by a few startups and tech companies. There aren't many jobs yet as I think it is still mostly an academic area but it's something to look into.

This is not directly answering your query but you might sometimes be surprised at the positions available at major companies that work towards your goal of nature conservation. For example, I had a stint at Siemens working on an project that managed customer site environments. This meant doing things to help them conserve energy and helping them save money by reducing power waste. I am guessing Siemens doesn't come to mind as an environmental pioneer in spite of their work on wind power, etc. but there you are: it was functionally one of the more gratifying jobs I had.

> However, I've been wondering if there is a demand for software in these projects?

No, there's not a demand for software in this arena. All this stuff is dominated by grants and politically charged funds.

When I was working in that field any 'software development' I did was alongside everything else I did. Most of that was online database and website work and some scripts to make analyzing data easier. I still spent far more time doing field work, writing reports and hustling for grant money though.

Nature and animal conservation is a political issue. The best use of your skills would be to aid in the lobbying efforts for tighter regulations and more money for developing countries.

You might save a tiger, but in the year it took you to save him, Brazil cut down 8 million hectares of the rain forest for palm oil.

I worked on a forestry grant platform for a while. It was interesting, but at the end of the day it was the same software problems I solve everywhere else

Hey, we are working on this www.bexbox.cc

Drop me an email at nhh@downforce.com. We don't have a framework for hiring at the moment but might do very soon.

I would have to imagine a large amount of work in the animal conservation space would be in the hardware market.

What country is this?

droneseed

inaturalist

Cornell ornithology lab

eesa

Caltech JPL

USFWS

MBARI

blue point conservation science

NOAA

Sitka technology group

conservation x labs

sail drone

uw escience institute

greenridge sciences

Oregon carbon

m science (marine research)

Tortuga agtech

conservation metrics

A few thoughts:

- https://4returns.earth/network/job-listings/ is in the regenerative ag space - lists some tech jobs if you search for them. (e.g. try https://4returns.earth/network/job-listings/?searchval=devel... )

- Conservation is only one area, and the term 'conservation' itself is a frame I've been more critical of after reading papers like https://www.uv.es/jgpausas/papers/Pausas-Millan-2019_BioScie... which have been making me think some of the problems we have might be more with abandoning land for the city. Another frame of thinking about about is how/where you want to live and go from there - I'm really questioning whether one should live in "today's society" - that doesn't mean going off-grid entirely but living in a way that's local/bioregional oriented..

- I'm skeptical of the tech-focused effort on only looking at co2 because it doesn't account for the other problem areas (google "planetary boundaries framework" to learn about biodiversity collapse/nutrient flows and how those are much bigger problems), but there's the airminers folks: http://www.airminers.org . Again, while this falls more in the tech frame I'm not sure I'd spend time on it.

- While I disagree with some of the recommendations around 'effective altruism', it's another path worth considering if your survival requires making money at the moment. You could say, work at a mapping or weather-related company spend then leverage the experience later on for more direct action. At the moment I haven't quit my dayjob yet but am taking an "Ecosystem Restoration Design" course (https://www.gaiaeducation.org), donated to various things, and participate in a study group around these topics (https://earth-regenerators.mn.co) and feel like that so far has helped in developing a perspective before jumping into anything.

- almost forgot, Patagonia's Action Works seems to have a really good platform for finding tech volunteering on environmental projects: https://www.patagonia.com/actionworks/

You mean making conserves?