Job Openings at Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development

The GIT Lead will be required to provide technical leadership and coordination in all SERVIR Eastern and Southern Africa (E&SA) work relating to geo-spatial information technology (GIT).
The position will leverage on the individual’s knowledge and expertise in GIT, with an emphasis on major issues of interest at global, regional and national levels, and therefore contribute to SERVIR's goal of developing services that respond to societal problems in this field.
In this regard, the individual will be required to execute the following duties and responsibilities:

Duties and responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership in GIT issues to the staff under him/her, to work effectively and come up with results as per SERVIR E&SA's Work Plan and the SERVIR Results Framework. He/she will work with other staff to deliver state of the art GIT tools and
• applications which facilitate use of SERVIR services.
• Conceptualize problem areas through engagement of relevant stakeholders and formulation of appropriate GIT solutions to respond to problems around societal benefitissues.
• Engage partner institutions in problem definition, proposal development, and execution of a project to achieve a desired result within the GIT field. Partner institutions could be, but are not limited to SERVIR implementing partners, implementers of Applied Science
• Projects, etc.
• Develop work plans for the GIT tasks, in liaison with other Thematic Leads under SERVIR E&SA project. Contribute to the overall SERVIR E&SA work planning process.
• Ensure timely delivery of results for assignments under GIT, and strictly adhere to set reporting deadlines.
• Coordinate and work with different agencies and SERVIR partners (e.g. governments, non-governmental organizations, universities, research institutes etc) to derive products that are relevant to policy and/or operations.
• Lead and coordinate analysis of data and information, write articles for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Liaise with RCMRD IT Section to ensure proper operations and maintenance of SERVIR
• IT infrastructure and systems administration, including maintenance of an inventory of all equipment, data and products, the website and also provide regular back-ups among other tasks.
• Present the results of the GIT work effectively and communicate findings to diverse audiences, either at policy level, scientific forums, and/or community-based organizations.
• Make timely reports (submissions of proposals, work plans, quarterly reports, annual reports and budgets) to the relevant supervisors.
• Liaise with the SERVIR User Engagement Lead and M&E Officers to ensure that the outreach and monitoring and evaluation data and information from relevant GIT tasks are captured adequately.
• Liaise with the Capacity Development Lead to ensure capacity building activities under relevant GIT tasks are coordinated and delivered appropriately.

Qualifications and experience

The ideal candidate will be required to have the following qualifications:

• A Master’s degree or higher in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Geo-Spatial Sciences (or a related field), and 4 years’ experience with demonstrable outputs in the field of geo-information technology.
• Demonstrable experience working with GIS, geo-spatial analysis tools, IT, where relevant programming skills were applied to solve a problem. The knowledge to translate geo-spatial data into geo-spatial solutions to address various environmental issues will be
• added advantage.
• Demonstrable experience working as a developer with R, Python, JavaScript, Google Earth Engine, Jupyter Notebook, Linux Scripting or other similar programs.
• Demonstrable capacity to engage peers in geo-information technology using geo-spatial tools and related applications. The capacity to define problems, develop proposals, and execute projects to achieve desired results.
• Capacity to work with multi-agency and multi-national teams on problems relating to geo-information technology and to develop products that are relevant to policy and or operations.
• Knowledge and capacity to analyze geo-spatial and non-spatial data and information and write articles for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to present results effectively and communicate to diverse audiences, either at policy level, scientific forums, and/or community-based organizations.
• Demonstrable ability to lead a team to work effectively on a defined problem and come up with results within a desired timeframe.

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The Capacity Development Lead will primarily be responsible for hub activities that develop and increase the capabilities of member States and other stakeholders to work with Earth observation data for societal benefit.

Duties and responsibilities

• Design and implementation of comprehensive capacity building programs in application of earth observation/remote sensing, GIS, and geo-information related fields in environmental disciplines.
• Coordination of training programs targeted at decision makers, policy makers, professionals and graduate level students in environmental sciences, water and water related disasters, climate change, land use management, ecosystem management, wildlife ecology and management etc.
• Building and institutionalizing the technical capacity of decision-makers in the geoinformation related fields.
• Engagement and collaboration with national and international institutions in the field of training and capacity development in earth observation, applied remote sensing and GIS, with a view to developing collaborations that foster strong content development.
• Promotion of the different modules of the capacity building program in the Eastern & Southern Africa region, with a view to encouraging the application of different tools, data and products developed by RCMRD.
• Coordination of capacity building needs assessments and maintenance of all capacitydevelopment related inventories.
• Work with the Training Section at RCMRD to assist in the development of trainingprograms.

Qualifications and experience

• At least a Masters’ degree in Remote Sensing, Earth Observation, GIS, Geo-SpatialInformation with a strong bias to applications in environmental sciences, water resources, food security, disaster management and/or natural resources management, with at least 7 years’ experience in training and capacity building initiatives in such fields.
• Knowledge in earth observation/remote sensing and GIS applications, with demonstrated experience in training using such tools in environment, climate, weather, water resources, hydrology, ecosystems, forest resources and/or species distribution modelling disciplines
• etc.
• Demonstrated experience in development of a comprehensive capacity building program in remote sensing and GIS applications – both basic theory and practice. The capacity to develop training materials and provide editorial oversight over such materials is an added advantage.
• Excellent coordination skills with the ability to organize and direct multi-disciplinary training programs that apply geo-information technologies and related fields in environment, climate, weather, water resources, hydrology, ecosystems, forest resources and/or species distribution modelling disciplines. Experience in organizing and coordinating training workshops would be an added advantage.
• Ability to work with different technical persons/sections to develop content appropriate for feeding into a capacity development program.
• Project management experience, including a proven record of productive engagement with government institutions, NGOs and scientists would be an added advantage.
• Ability to coordinate capacity building needs assessments and market studies.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English, demonstrable by published work in reputable media (peer reviewed journals, published reports etc) in the respective field of specialization.