National Audubon Society - Vice President of Data and Technology

National Audubon Society - Vice President of Data and Technology

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About the National Audubon Society:

The National Audubon Society is a nonprofit conservation organization that protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow.

Audubon has more than 700 staff working across the United States and seven countries in 17 state and regional offices, 41 nature centers, and 23 wildlife sanctuaries. Together as one Audubon, we aspire to alter the course of climate change and habitat loss, leading to healthier bird populations and reversing current trends in biodiversity loss.

Role Summary:

The Vice President of Data and Technology is a senior leader at Audubon who will work closely with the Chief Technology Officer to lead strategy and major technology initiatives. As the dedicated leader of the Data unit in Technology, the person in this role will be charged with setting the vision and leading a team that delivers the technology strategy, services, and infrastructure that enables data-powered work to maximize Audubon’s impact.

Projects you can expect the team to work on include:

  • Maintaining existing and adding new data sources to the “Aviary” – Audubon’s Snowflake-centric enterprise data architecture and building optimized views and workflows for analysis, reporting, and dashboard visualization
  • Improving the robustness and reliability of data integrations among systems including CRM, marketing platforms, financial systems, operational applications, and the “Aviary”
  • Building predictive models for user engagement and fundraising capacity, based on data from the “Aviary” and data co-ops
  • Collaborating with Conservation and Science leads to define a tool for scalable conservation decision-making at the local level built on existing products for data and GIS
  • Updating and expanding the data services layers of the Bird Migration Explorer, a multi-year project to track and aggregate varied data sources about migratory bird species, where they go, and the conservation challenges they face 

Responsibilities:

  • Provide strategic leadership of our Data and Analytics work, including defining the roadmap and ensuring successful delivery of data and integration engineering, data applications, reporting, and analysis
  • Act as principal owner of Audubon’s Enterprise Data Architecture and increase its use for analytics and reporting, as well as curated scientific databases used to drive Audubon’s conservation work
  • Think creatively as a lead on selected cross-department initiatives, including measuring customer journeys, engineering management, systems architecture, and integration strategy
  • Build a highly successful, lean team of engineers, data scientists, and analysts for building and owning the data platforms, integrations, and pipelines, ELT architecture, and analytical and business intelligence tools
  • Leverage the Enterprise Geographic Information Systems (GIS) function by overseeing GIS team leads, GIS support specialists, and Dangermond fellows that manage GIS infrastructure, decisions, and mapping applications
  • Partner with the CTO to run productive technology team retreats, meetings, professional development and mentorship programs, as well as annual and quarterly planning sessions
  • Act as the organization’s subject matter expert for data-related tools and platforms, data best practices for integrity, testing, and modeling, proprietary and open-source licensing, and analytical approaches
  • Act as co-lead of the Audubon Architecture Review Board to provide an architecture review and decision framework for the technology team
  • Partner with the VP of Digital Products, the Senior Director of IT, and the Director of Digital Platforms to support data governance initiatives and to ensure the reliability and security of data services and infrastructure

The ideal candidate will have:

  • A track record of leading entrepreneurial data teams that build innovative analytics products and robust data pipelines
  • Experience operating effectively as a senior leader and thought partner, building a roadmap that drives measurable results
  • A history of working in large, collaborative, cross-functional environments with clear examples of building support for new technologies 
  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to distill complex concepts, results, or decisions into clear and explainable statements for non-technical colleagues
  • Strong understanding of big data architectures and data modeling to efficiently process large volumes of data, and of tools used to transform and effectively visualize data
  • Deep SQL experience and familiarity with Snowflake cloud data warehouse solution or similar solutions like Redshift, Azure Data Warehouse, and/or BigQuery
  • An understanding of how to analyze geospatial data to inform decisions (experience using GIS technology, particularly the Esri ecosystem (ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, etc.). helpful, but not required)
  • Hands-on experience with Python or other programming languages proven to be robust and widely used for ETL/ELT and data analytics like Java, .NET, or R.
  • Deep commitment to Audubon’s equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging values
  • Genuine passion for conservation and the mission of the National Audubon Society
  • Experience with solutions like Spark, Hadoop, EMR, etc. and complex machine learning or data analysis platforms like Sagemaker, Domino, TensorFlow, etc. helpful but not required

Our tech stack includes:

  • Snowflake
  • dbt
  • FiveTran
  • Sigma
  • AWS/Azure
  • ArcGIS
  • OvalEdge
  • MuleSoft

More Information

Location: United States. Remote is welcome with minimal travel quarterly to office locations in NYC or Washington, DC or conferences / retreats

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer

Manages: Director of Data Engineering, Director of Membership Analytics, Director of Enterprise GIS, and Senior Product Manager, GIS Strategy

Salary:  $205,000 to $220,000/year (contingent on market compensation formula based on geo-differential). This is a full-time exempt position.

Application deadline: February 1, 2023

How to Apply

Click the "Apply for this position" link below and submit a resume.

The National Audubon Society is a federal contractor and an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE). All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. We are committed to a policy of nondiscrimination, inclusion and equal opportunity and actively seek a diverse pool of candidates in this search.

COVID Policy

All new hires must be fully vaccinated prior to their start of employment unless they are pre-qualified by HR for exemption.

This job is no longer open
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