Do you enjoy working in riparian habitats? Are you equally at home troubleshooting a data logger in the field and writing code that makes sense of that environmental data back at your desk? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Office of Cannabis is seeking a Senior Environmental Scientist (Specialist) to work at the intersection of aquatic ecology, data science, and watershed stewardship. This position blends hands-on fieldwork with advanced analytical and data-driven science to assess drivers of watershed health. You must be equally comfortable participating in rigorous, multi-day field sampling events collecting high-quality field data, and turning those data into durable knowledge through analysis, synthesis and modeling. On the field side, you will conduct discrete and continuous water quality monitoring, participate in bioassessment, and sample water for nutrients and eDNA. On the data side, you will contribute to aggregating, managing, and analyzing data from diverse sources, transforming raw data into insights about freshwater communities, watershed processes, flow regime and habitat, using statistical, GIS, and computational tools. This position is ideal for a dynamic person who thoroughly enjoys fieldwork, but is also comfortable working with databases, analytics and reproducible methods as both aspects are critical to the successful execution of this role. If you are excited by the idea of building science that lasts beyond a single field season, we encourage you to bring your skill and passion to our team.
Link to Senior Environmental Scientist (Specialist) Exam: CalCareers
You will find additional information about the job in the Duty Statement.