Deer Research Biologist

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Begin a fulfilling career with the State of Indiana by joining one of the largest employers in the state, offering a range of opportunities across 60+ agencies. At the state, you'll find competitive compensation, a robust benefits package and a commitment to work-life balance. Most importantly, you'll have the chance to make a real and measurable impact on the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana.

About the Department of Natural Resources (DNR):
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources protects, enhances, preserves, and wisely uses natural, cultural, and recreational resources for the benefit of Indiana's citizens through professional leadership, management, and education. DNR Fish & Wildlife enriches the quality of life for present and future generations by balancing the biological, ecological, recreational, and economic benefits of Indiana’s fish, wildlife, and their habitats.

Role Overview:

• The Deer Research Biologist works at the interface of research and management (i.e., their research has direct management implications). Implications include both proactive and reactive management. The position requires both long term planning of research projects (e.g., monitoring designs for density estimation that optimize cost effectiveness, which includes both cost savings and statistical inference) and short-term research reacting to unforeseen situations (e.g., disease outbreaks in which we desire immediate inference).
  
  For this reason, the Deer Research Biologist must be well trained in quantitative ecology. They must be confident decision makers, as their decisions related to research are almost always made independently. They must also exhibit the desire and ability to learn new, sometimes complex, statistical skills or concepts in a short amount of time (often the case for short‑term research reacting to unforeseen situations above).
• Although scientifically sound decisions are usually made with statistical inference from good data, the Deer Research Biologist must make decisions often without perfect data. Making decisions without perfect data usually means combining many sources of imperfect data to make an informed and defendable decision. Therefore, the incumbent must be resourceful and comfortable making decisions in imperfect scenarios. Because applied data analysis is a main component of this position, the ability to fluently use the R Programming Language is firmly required.
  
  This position often requires learning new code quickly and applying it to real problems for white‑tailed deer.
• The Deer Research Biologist works closely with the Deer Project Leader and a team of temporary employees (both in the field and office) to achieve the objectives of the Indiana Deer Project. The Deer Research Biologist will have the responsibility of managing 1‑2 employees on a regular basis and more on a short‑term basis. Duties for temporary employees may include setting out and retrieving game cameras, assessing photos for species and conventional distance sampling, reviewing footage of flights to identify and count deer, and answering questions from the public.
  
  The Deer Research Biologist will need to train and ensure quality control for temporary employees under their supervision.

The salary for this position traditionally starts at $53,222.00 but may be commensurate with education and work experience. Use our Compensation Calculator to view the total compensation package.

The essential functions of this role are as follows:

• Develop, execute, and direct research or management of programs on a large resource or large geographic region that covers multiple districts.
• Coordinate with other states and participate on multistate management teams for interjurisdictional resources.
• Identify resource and research priorities through input, strategic plans, work plans, statewide surveys, and public input.
• Coordinate university and multistate research projects.
• Program administration of environmental and habitat projects including applying for and managing federal grants and managing environmental permitting processes.
• Design, develop, and implement surveys for…