Open Positions

Join Our Team

Thanks for your interest in the Natural Capital Project! Our current job openings can be found here on this page. If you are interested in being notified by email about opportunities as they become available, please register for our email notification list. We are committed to inclusivity and promoting an equitable environment that values and respects the uniqueness of all members of our organization. We therefore encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds. Whatever your intersection of identities, you are welcome at the Natural Capital Project.

Job Openings

Grants and Finance Manager
Software Engineer
 

Grants and Finance Manager

The Natural Capital Project is looking for a Grants and Finance Manager (Research Administrator 3) who enjoys thinking beyond black-and-white solutions and embraces the complexities and subtleties of each situation. The Grants and Finance Manager will work closely with the Executive Director and Faculty Director, scientists, staff, postdocs and students affiliated with the Natural Capital Project, and with the Director of Finance and Operations of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Some team members are remote so work is often done across time zones, collaborating over email, Slack, and Zoom. To fit well into our team and interdisciplinary organization, we are looking for someone who can work independently, take initiative, and communicate clearly with other staff, scientists, and practitioners. The successful candidate will be self-motivated, polite, curious, and pragmatic.

Your Responsibilities will include:

  • Perform various program and grant management tasks (e.g., training grant management, pre-award and grant submission), in addition to post-award finance tasks.
  • Prepare complex proposals within parameters of sponsored and non-sponsored research guidelines.
  • Oversee and communicate submission process, both paper and electronic; resolve issues relating to proposal preparation and submittal process.
  • Develop, prepare, revise, and finalize project budgets, and provide budget justification; obtain cost sharing commitment and support. Serve as liaison and active partner between principal investigators, Office of Sponsored Research, research groups, and other departments; respond to sponsor inquiries; advise of new regulations.
  • Review and approve expenditures, advise on post-award spending and commitment activity, and oversee compliance related to fund and revenue.
  • Develop and communicate reports supporting project status; create forecasting models, scenarios, and decision aides.
  • Manage contract closeout process and audit inquiries; submit final reports and certificates.
  • Interpret complex university, government, and international institutional policies (FAR, Cost Accounting Standards, Office of Management and Budget circulars, sponsored guidelines, etc.) for project and university personnel and help guide other staff in interpreting complex policies.
  • Document existing processes and policies and identify and implement process and policy improvements. Participate in and lead cross campus projects. Train and advise on issues requiring specific technical expertise.
  • Initiate and participate in gift handling. Develop PTA, initiate gift transmittal, and oversee expenditures to ensure compliance to fulfill donor’s intent.
  • Manage and oversee designated awards; advise on spending and commitment activity to ensure appropriate spending according to Stanford policies and guidelines.
  • Manage overall labor schedules including time allocation of all NatCap staff across various funding sources.
  • Prepare the annual budget under the direction of the NatCap’s Faculty and Executive Directors and the Woods Institute for the Environment; monitor and report budget variances at least quarterly, and as needed for board and committee meetings; develop and monitor financial status for various funding streams including an operating PTA; and propose budget improvements to directors.
  • The job duties listed are typical examples of work performed by positions in this job classification and are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, tasks, and responsibilities. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing the general nature and scope of the job or level of responsibility. Employees may also perform other duties as assigned.

To learn more and to apply visit Stanford Careers.

Software Engineer 

The Natural Capital Project is seeking a thoughtful, curious, and pragmatic Software Engineer to join our software team. The engineer will work closely with scientists and other software engineers to develop and maintain a family of open-source software tools and libraries including InVEST, our suite of models for mapping ecosystem services, and PyGeoprocessing, a library of memory-efficient geoprocessing routines. In addition to ongoing maintenance and science project support, the software engineer will contribute directly to our next-generation software platform to help address critical issues common to ecosystem service analyses. Our next-gen platform involves integrating cloud data services into InVEST, creating a scalable and distributed computational infrastructure for large-scale modeling runs, and developing a reporting framework for scientific results. The engineer can expect to engage in all aspects of the software lifecycle and develop pragmatic solutions to challenging, real-world problems.

The software team is remote and works across time zones, collaborating over Slack, Zoom, and through GitHub pull requests. To fit well into our remote team and interdisciplinary organization, we are looking for someone who can work independently, take initiative, and communicate clearly with other software developers, scientists, and practitioners. The successful candidate will be self-motivated, polite, curious, and pragmatic. We are excited to talk to any engineer with a track record of developing and deploying any kind of software project. Even if you only meet some of the preferred qualifications, we encourage you to apply.

Your Responsibilities will include:

  • Developing and maintaining NatCap’s current and future open-source software, including the InVEST and PyGeoprocessing Python libraries.
  • Writing efficient, readable, and well-tested code that aligns with our software development methodology.
  • Supporting the NatCap science team with data processing, numerical computation, and writing research scripts.
  • Collaborating on design documents and code reviews.
  • Supporting InVEST users via NatCap’s online forum.
  • Contributing to the development of our next-generation software platform.
  • Making use of the right programming languages, frameworks, and tools for the problem at hand.

To learn more and to apply visit Stanford Careers.