Postdoctoral Remote Sensing Scientist

Postdoctoral Remote Sensing Scientist

Cherokee United Services is seeking a Postdoctoral Remote Sensing Scientist in Lafayette, Louisiana. This role advances research on coastal wetland change and ecosystem responses to extreme events at landscape, regional, and global scales.

Compensation is commensurate with experience.

Full-time benefits include Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), and other possible benefits as provided. Benefits are subject to change with or without notice.

• Conduct scientific literature reviews related to remote sensing, GIS analysis, landscape ecology, coastal wetland ecosystems, and habitats being mapped or analyzed.
• Advance the production and analysis of remotely sensed data to assess coastal wetland change, support restoration planning, evaluate restoration effectiveness, and inform future ecosystem predictions.
• Acquire, develop, organize, document, and analyze long-term remote-sensing data to measure spatial and temporal change in coastal wetland ecosystems.
• Execute experiments using remotely sensed imagery, spatial-analysis outputs, and innovative geospatial methods.
• Apply machine-learning and deep-learning techniques to remote-sensing imagery and spatial data, as appropriate to project needs.
• Integrate existing geospatial information, including historical climate data, vegetation-change products, and other environmental datasets, with newly developed remote-sensing products.
• Apply knowledge of landscape ecology and coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics for advancing understanding of coastal wetland changes using geospatial analyses and remote sensing.
• Produce custom geospatial products and analytical outputs that support research on the ecological effects of extreme events occurring in recent decades.
• Develop and maintain complete, accurate documentation for project activities, datasets, data-production processes, technical methods, and analytical procedures.
• Maintain project status records, timekeeping documentation, data logs, analytical code, and version-controlled project materials.
• Produce Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)-compliant metadata for all required deliverables.
• Prepare publication-ready maps, figures, tables, datasets, data releases, reports, and manuscripts for peer-reviewed journal publication.
• Summarize and communicate research findings through technical reports, journal articles, conference presentations, and presentations to USGS staff, cooperators, partners, and customers.
• Provide a leadership role in preparing for and facilitating meetings with research partners.
• Participate in project meetings, technical discussions, and other coordination activities as needed.
• Assist with technical aspects of proposal development, as assigned.
• Use professional experience and sound judgment to recommend next steps, identify issues, and propose solutions during project execution.
• Perform work independently and in accordance with established standard operating procedures, quality standards, and project requirements.
• Support field-based data-collection activities, when required.
• Follow all applicable federal information-security, privacy, property-protection, and facility-security requirements.
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned.

• Doctoral degree in geography or a closely related field required or strongly preferred.
• Academic emphasis or demonstrated expertise in GIS, remote sensing, landscape ecology, coastal wetlands, environmental science, geography, or a related discipline required.
• One to three years of experience working in a scientific or research setting preferred.
• Demonstrated experience developing, processing, analyzing, and interpreting remote-sensing data products required.
• Experience using GIS, spatial analysis, geospatial datasets, satellite or aerial imagery, and environmental data required.
• Experience applying machine-learning and/or deep-learning techniques to remote-sensing or spatial-analysis projects preferred.
• Knowledge of coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics and coastal ecosystem change preferred.
• Ability to integrate historical climate data, vegetation-change products, and other geospatial datasets into scientific analyses.
• Experience conducting analyses across landscape, regional, and/or global geographic scales preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to design, execute, document, and interpret scientific experiments using remotely sensed imagery and spatial-analysis outputs.
• Strong experience preparing technical reports, peer-reviewed manuscripts, scientific figures, tables, maps, data products, and conference presentations.
• Familiarity with USGS or federal scientific-data practices, including data management, reproducible methods, technical documentation, and metadata development.
• Ability to create FGDC-compliant metadata for datasets and other required deliverables.
• Demonstrated ability to maintain accurate data logs, project records, documentation, and code in a version-control…