LTE Wildlife Research Analyst (Madison)

Position Summary

This position will support applied research and development of population metrics from Snapshot Wisconsin trail camera data to inform management of deer, turkeys, and other Wisconsin wildlife species. The position will process and analyze Snapshot Wisconsin detection data working towards finalizing years of data. This incumbent of this position is expected to write custom SQL queries, write and annotate R code, fill data requests, and implement automated processing of research products whenever possible. This person will assist in running statistical analyses and models and assessing model results. This position works under general supervision and will be based out of Madison, WI.

Responsibilities

• 50% Processing, documenting, sharing, troubleshooting, and finalizing trail camera detection data
• Pull and process Snapshot Wisconsin trail camera data from an Oracle database and using custom SQL queries and R functions
• Fill data requests that come in from volunteers, students, researchers, and DNR employees
• Contribute to user acceptance testing of Oracle database changes that fix bugs or add features
• Contribute to custom R packages for data analysis, especially adding documentation and new functions
• Support Snapshot Team needs related to fixing and streamlining code and script
• Assess data quality and identify inconsistencies in data that require further assessment
• Identify and implement solutions to finalize annual Snapshot Wisconsin datasets
• 20% Assistance with statistical analysis and model development
• Assess patterns in data to separate noise (e.g., sampling issues, classification differences, detection differences) from abundance trends
• Analyze trail camera data using a range of statistics and models that include covariates
• Analyze trail camera data using models that include covariates and assess model fit and predictions
• Visualize statistics and model predictions spatially and temporally
• 10% Other duties as assigned

Qualifications

• In addition to the required qualifications below, the selected candidate must be eligible to drive a state vehicle and meet the following criteria:
• Have a valid driver’s license
• Be at least 18 years of age
• Have a minimum of two years licensed driving experience
• Have not had three (3) or more moving violations and/or at-fault accidents in the past two (2) years
• Have no OWI/DUI violations within the past year
• Qualified candidates will have all of the following:
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent training/ experience in computer science, data science, quantitative ecology, or related field.
• Demonstrated proficiency with pulling and querying data from relational databases (e.g., SQL)
• Demonstrated proficiency with data cleaning, data wrangling and documentation using R or similar (e.g., tidyverse, RMarkdown)
• Demonstrated proficiency with data analysis coding languages (e.g., R and Python)
• Demonstrated proficiency with version control in GitHub, or similar
• Demonstrated proficiency with automation development
• Well-qualified candidates will have one or more of the following:
• Master’s degree or higher in computer science, data science, statistics, quantitative ecology, biology or a related field
• Experience developing R packages
• Experience with Python
• Experience in research data collaborations
• Experience with trail camera research projects and trail camera data