Data Science Manager

Location: Remote, New York / Bay Area / D.C. a plus

Reports to: Director of Conservation Science

Salary: $90 to $110k depending on experience

Travel: Up to 15%  

Preferred Start Date: December 1st, 2025

Employment Status: Full-time, non-exempt

Priority Application Deadline: October 10th, 2025

About Blue Forest

Blue Forest is a conservation finance nonprofit founded in 2015, focusing on advancing ecosystem restoration through scientific research, financial innovation, and collaborative partnerships. Since 2018, Blue Forest has managed investor capital through its flagship financial product, the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB), which deploys private capital to finance forest restoration projects to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. More recently, Blue Forest has also established Blue Forest Asset Management (BFAM), an investment management platform that connects investors to compelling, mission-aligned opportunities in a broader set of asset classes, including private equity and private credit investments, beyond FRB projects.

Blue Forest is made up of an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, foresters, finance professionals, and communications professionals committed to the mission: “To accelerate ecological restoration through conservation finance, enabling climate resilience for ecosystems and communities.”

Employees at Blue Forest are:

• Committed to Continuous Learning

• Driven by Collaboration

• Thoughtful Innovators for Impact

• Grounded in Science

• Passionate about Restoring Earth’s Ecosystems
  

Position Summary

Blue Forest's new strategic plan emphasizes capacity building to apply scientific tools for benefit accounting and communicating nature-positive pathways to new audiences. The Data Science Manager will provide input to various cross-departmental, fast-paced, collaborative projects. This will power analytics and information that serve the organization's measurement, evaluation, reporting, and storytelling functions. The Data Science Manager will be responsible for organizing data and creating workflows to access and provide insights to the team. They will connect science and project development at Blue Forest, working closely with relationship managers and implementation partners to strengthen technical partnerships. This position will leverage data platforms such as Google Earth Engine and ArcGIS Online (AGOL), as well as other interactive reporting tools used by Blue Forest, to communicate the expected outcomes of our planned and active FRB project portfolio. They will work closely with FRB tracking and impact reporting teams to build “connective tissues” to our implementation partner's data and systems.

Responsibilities & Duties

Design Backend Data Systems: 50%

• Design and deploy custom databases to meet project and partner needs for storing, curating, and analyzing data.

• Conduct a review of current procedures for acquiring and managing data to identify areas for improvement.

• Check in with staff leading metrics tracking on individual projects to continue streamlining processes, identify challenges, and potential solutions.

Manage and Enhance FRB Databases: 25%

• Compile and manage consistent data flows from multiple platforms and data types to support project development, project management, and reporting requirements.

• Improve data workflows and processing tasks by implementing data quality control procedures to ensure FRB impact reporting accuracy, completeness, and credibility.

• Develop and maintain metadata to ensure others can discover, understand, and use knowledge.

Build and Strengthen Capacity: 25%

• Collaborate with Blue Forest’s science and project development staff and external partners to identify data needs and requirements.

• Educate staff in basic data management, including technical support and training to internal users of data, analytical tools, and workflows. This could include 1-on-1 or group support sessions.

• Provide technical training expertise on data onboarding and management using video tutorials, strategy documentation, and good practices.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience working directly with database management systems such as Oracle and MySQL, and can configure, manage, and maintain relational databases.  

• Familiar with SQL, BigQuery, & writing scripts (Python, R) to wrangle unstructured data

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, organization, and attention to detail

• Able to navigate ambiguity, prioritize workloads, manage projects, and communicate as part of a team working remotely

Desired Skills 

• Strong communication skills to translate technical concepts to a non-technical audience

• Experience applying both open source and proprietary geospatial tools (e.g., QGIS, ArcGIS Pro, R) to perform spatial data management, querying, and reporting

• Eagerness to work in a transdisciplinary environment, develop collaborative approaches, and value knowledge plurality (ecosystem services, social sciences, Indigenous and local knowledge)

Benefits

• 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision coverage; subsidized coverage for dependents

• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan with a 5% employer match

• 4 weeks paid vacation and 17 paid holidays; paid sick time and volunteer time

• 3 months of paid family leave

• Employer-paid life and long-term disability insurance

• Access to Dependent Care FSA and Health FSA

• Public Lands Exploration stipend (reimbursements for visits to National Forests, county parks, etc.)

• Monthly Home Office stipend or co-working space provided

• Dependent care costs are subsidized for business travel

• Additional stipends for health & wellness, home internet, and cell service

• Financial support for professional development
  

Additional Information 

Blue Forest is a fully remote company with staff located across all four continental U.S. time zones. While we value flexibility in work schedules, you should expect to have some overlap with Pacific Standard Time working hours in order to collaborate with partners and team members. Blue Forest also hosts an in-person team retreat each year.

HOW TO APPLY 

To apply to this position, please submit a resume and cover letter for your application through Recruitee. People from historically underrepresented populations and candidates with non-traditional career paths are especially encouraged to apply.

If participating in the interview process would require you to incur additional expenses to participate, such as childcare, please let us know, and we are happy to reimburse for reasonable costs incurred up to $30/hour for twice the length of each interview in which you participate. There will be space to request this reimbursement upon offer of an interview.