The National Audubon Society is hiring a
The National Audubon Society is a nonprofit conservation organization that protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. We work throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. Audubon’s state, regional, national, and international programs, nature centers, and chapters have an unparalleled wingspan that reaches millions of people each year to inform, inspire, and unite diverse communities in conservation action. As a sentinel species, we recognize that the fate of birds is inextricably tied to the fate of us all.
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.
Audubon is committed to a culture of workplace excellence, where our talented and diverse staff are deeply engaged, with a strong sense of belonging. The birds Audubon pledges to protect differ in color, size, behavior, geographical preference, and countless other ways. By honoring and celebrating the equally remarkable diversity of the human species, Audubon will bring new creativity, effectiveness, and leadership to our work throughout the hemisphere.
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 across the organization and the Technology team. Additionally, 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 mission impact. Data science, data engineering, analytics, geographic information systems (GIS), and business intelligence are essential to how Audubon does its work across business teams including conservation, science, advocacy, marketing, fundraising, and finance, and the Data and Analytics team plays a key role in empowering that work. The person in this role is also responsible for educating the broader Audubon organization by communicating the opportunities and value of technology, including using data-informed methodologies and modern-day data tools and platforms.
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.
• Collaborating with Conservation and Science leads to define a decision support tool strategy and technology plan built upon products, services, and infrastructure for data and GIS in service of scalable conservation decision-making at the local level.
• Updating and expanding the data services layers of the Bird Migration Explorer, in partnership with the Science team as part of the Migratory Bird Initiative, a multi-year project to track and aggregate varied data sources about migratory bird species, where they go, and the conservation challenges they face.
• Expanding and 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 potentially from other data sources, such as data co-ops.
• Setting a vision and strategy for building a holistic understanding of the journey of Audubon donors, advocates, and customers backed by data in the “Aviary”.
• Provide strategic thinking and leadership of our Data and Analytics work, including defining the roadmap of work, engaging in cross-organization priority projects with a heavy data component, and ensuring successful delivery of data and integration engineering, data applications, reporting, and analysis services.
• Act as principal owner of Audubon’s Enterprise Data Architecture and its use for: key initiatives in service of science, marketing, and fundraising; analytical reporting and data science; curated scientific databases used to drive Audubon’s conservation work; tracking cross-organizational metrics and KPIs; and driving future opportunities where data management, data science, machine learning, and predictive analysis play a significant role.
• Act as lead on selected cross-Audubon and cross-Technology team initiatives and functions, including measuring customer journeys, engineering management, systems architecture and integration strategy, and initiatives relating to goals driven by other Audubon divisions such as Conservation, Marketing, Development, States, and Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
• Partner with the CTO and other Technology leads to run Technology team retreats, meetings, professional development and mentorship programs, as well as annual and quarterly planning.
• Define roles, recruit, develop, and oversee a lean but highly successful team of engineers, data scientists, and analysts for building and owning the data platforms, data integrations and pipelines, ELT architecture, analytical and business intelligence tools, and related applications, as well as providing reporting and analytical support and services.
• Oversee the Enterprise Geographic Information Systems (GIS) function led by GIS team leads, GIS support specialists, and Dangermond fellows that manage the GIS infrastructure, supports GIS, decision support, and mapping needs across the Audubon network, and engage in priority projects with Science and other divisions that leverage enterprise GIS and mapping technologies.
• 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.
• 15+ YoE and 5+ years leadership in a role leading technology and data teams, including engineers, architects, data product managers, and/or analysts building and working with data lakes, warehouses, marts, pipelines, and providing reporting or analytical services.
• Leadership and/or executive experience working in technology organizations or teams in enterprise organizations with functions involving Data, IT, cybersecurity, and/or digital products.
• Advanced degree in Statistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related quantitative field strongly preferred.
• Strong commitment to Audubon’s equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB) values, and a proven track record of success of managing strong, diverse, and collaborative teams and mentoring early-career professionals.
• Demonstrated experience participating in organizational strategy and change management, especially as it relates to leveraging data technologies.
• Deep SQL experience and familiarity with Snowflake cloud data warehouse solution or similar solutions like Redshift, Azure Data Warehouse, and/or BigQuery.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure fundamentals (e.g., AWS EC2, S3, Lambda or equivalent services from Azure or Google)
• 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.
• Experience with Sigma or other business intelligence tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker, PowerBI) and familiarity with web data and mapping visualization technologies such as D3.js, Plotly, ArgGIS API for JavaScript, and Leaflet.
• Experience with or strong understanding of ETL/ELT and workflow tools like AWS Glue and Airflow.
• Experience with or strong understanding of GIS technology, particularly the Esri ecosystem (ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, etc.).
• Experience with or strong understanding of big data architectures and data modeling to efficiently process large volumes of data, including solutions like Spark, Hadoop, EMR, etc.
• Familiarity with machine learning and data science platforms and services like Sagemaker, Domino, TensorFlow, etc.
• Experience leading or working with web and mobile application teams including product management, design, and engineering.
• Ability and desire to build lasting relationships with leaders across the organization.
• Demonstrated ability to discuss technical information to non-technical audiences. Strong public speaking and writing skills are critical for success.
• Demonstrated ability to succeed in a highly matrixed, complex organization—strong ability to influence and persuade others required.
• Genuine passion for conservation and the mission of the National Audubon Society.
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.
The National Audubon Society endeavors to keep our careers site accessible to any and all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact Accommodations@audubon.org. This contact information is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.
All new hires must be fully vaccinated prior to their start of employment unless they are pre-qualified by HR for exemption.