Ocean Career: WRA Marine Ecologist

Marine/Estuarine Biology Position

We are a tenacious team of planners, engineers, and scientists, and we aim to leave the lands we love better than we found them. Our clients and partners hire us because we're skilled at navigating through challenging projects involving wildlands, parks, community spaces, and infrastructure. We bring over four decades of expertise, long-standing relationships, and connections to our local communities to make sure that projects are pursued in responsible ways where both people and the environment thrive.

As an organization, we believe that independence and interdependence are not mutually exclusive. We invest in systems, processes, and employee programs to support our staff's collective engagement and success. At the same time, we encourage our employees to operate with an ownership mindset, taking responsibility for outcomes and being true to our commitments. While this position includes some fieldwork on a seasonal basis, the primary responsibilities of this position are office-based.

We are actively seeking someone with a marine/estuarine biology or coastal ecology background to support WRA's marine services, shoreline permitting, and coastal habitat restoration lines of work. If you have experience with and an understanding of coastal or marine biology and you would be excited to apply your skills to the field of state and federal environmental regulatory compliance, we want to talk to you about joining one of our teams.

Ideal candidates have a knack for critical thinking, problem solving, and working collaboratively with teams. This position offers real opportunities for advancement, including interfacing with clients and agency staff, public speaking, and staff supervision.

The person hired for this role will need to reside within commuting distance to one of our three Northern California offices (San Rafael, Petaluma, and Emeryville), as periodic site visits and field work will be required.

In this role, you will work under the direct supervision of project managers to conduct a variety of work pertaining to coastal environmental regulatory compliance, including:

• Reviewing and analyzing engineers' designs for impacts to sensitive biological resources (e.g., San Francisco Bay, wetlands, streams, submerged aquatic vegetation, riparian vegetation)
• Coordinating closely with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists to create maps and other graphics depicting environmental data
• Reviewing and navigating tidal datums for fieldwork schedules and project designs
• Conducting surveys by kayak or other small vessels
• Preparing technical reports
• Preparing environmental permit applications on behalf of clients
• Scheduling and facilitating project meetings
• Assisting other technical staff with a wide array of writing assignments: biological resources reports, aquatic resources delineations, tidal marsh restoration plans, mitigation monitoring plans and annual monitoring reports
• Occasionally or seasonally conducting a wide array of fieldwork: submerged aquatic vegetation mapping; tidal marsh vegetation sampling; intertidal invertebrate habitat assessments; wetland delineations; invasive marine species identification; marine mammal identification; biological compliance monitoring during nearshore or in-water construction

To be successful in this role, you will need:

• A Bachelor's or Master's degree in biology, marine or estuarine science, or tidal marsh ecology
• At least 2 to 4 years of experience conducting field surveys/sampling of natural resources in a coastal or marine setting (e.g., plants, wildlife, algae/seagrass, invertebrates, water quality)
• Knowledge of the ecology and management of seagrass, marine algae, marine mammals, and/or marine fish
• Familiarity with laws and policies that regulate aquatic resources in Northern California (pertaining to agencies such as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Coastal Commission, San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
• To be physically fit enough…