Are you highly motivated with excellent data management skills and interested in supporting a dynamic, global scientific collaboration with thousands of partners? Do you have excellent communication skills including in Portuguese?

ForestPlots.net is a global collaboration supported by a web-based application for managing, sharing and analysing forest demographic, biodiversity, soil and carbon data. It focusses on the world’s most diverse and carbon-rich forests in South America, Africa and Asia. Currently with more than 2500 registered users in 63 countries, ForestPlots.net tracks the lives of 3 million trees in over 7000 localities.

This Research Data Officer position will have a key role in growing the quality, quantity, and impact of this unique resource. You will liaise with the ForestPlots.net team, led by the database manager, on a day-to-day basis. You will also liaise with the academic team of the NERC-funded SECO project that leads development of a plot-based understanding for tropical dry biomes (Prof Oliver Phillips and Prof Tim Baker at Leeds, and Kyle Dexter and Prof Casey Ryan at Edinburgh).

As a highly motivated and organised individual, you will be based with the ForestPlots.net team in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. Your role will be to support our partners directly with their data management needs, especially those working in savanna and dry forest systems worldwide, and in all forest ecosystems across Brazil. You will act as the first point of contact for these collaborators, assisting and advising with data management of long-term ecological plots. You will have experience in managing forest or ecological data and as you gain experience with ForestPlots.net you will be responsible for ensuring high-level data quality control, delivering training to some users in our tropical research community, and ensuring consistent, high-quality protocols are adopted by partners.

As your role will involve a high degree of autonomy, it is essential that you are highly organized and self-motivated with excellent communication, interpersonal and time management skills, and proven attention to detail. You will be a team player who can build effective working relationships with researchers locally and globally. You will be able to communicate effectively verbally and in writing in English and Portuguese. Overall, you will need to plan your activities, monitor progress, decide priorities, and ensure successful outcomes against multiple demands.

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact: 

Aurora Levesley, ForestPlots.net Administrator, School of Geography

Email: A.Levesley@leeds.ac.uk

Professor Oliver Phillips, Chair in Tropical Ecology, School of Geography

Email: O.Phillips@leeds.ac.uk