Senior Fisheries Biometrician

Location:

Seattle, WA

Senior Fisheries Biometrician —

Reports To:

FLSA:
Exempt —

Location:

Seattle, WA

Posted: 7/15/26

Innovate! Inc. is seeking a highly experienced Senior Fisheries Biometrician to serve as a senior statistical and ecological data scientist supporting NOAA Fisheries with advanced probabilistic, mark-recapture, survival, migration, and simulation analyses that inform management decisions for Pacific salmon and other West Coast fisheries resources. The role requires collaboration in a fast-paced environment and contributes to innovative environmental projects.

Contingent upon contract being awarded

Location: Work will be conducted on-site at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, Washington (WA) or at one of its associated field stations in WA or Oregon

Salary Range: $120,000 - $165,000

Position status: Full Time; with benefits

Benefits include: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K with match, Life Insurance, and PTO

• Provide advanced statistical analysis to inform fisheries management, recovery, permitting, hydropower, and life-cycle decisions.
• Analyze spatial and temporal variability in processes affecting migrating salmon, including survival and migration through river and hydropower systems.
• Quantify relationships among fish density, growth, survival, migration rate, environmental conditions, ecological stressors, habitat metrics, and management actions.
• Develop novel probabilistic, mathematical, hierarchical, and simulation models representing complex ecological and behavioral processes.
• Provide statistical consultation and support to researchers during study design, sampling design, model selection, analysis, validation, and interpretation.
• Organize, curate, document, and quality-control ecological datasets used for mark-recapture and related statistical modeling.
• Conduct analyses using accepted methods and rigorous QA/QC, including code review, model diagnostics, sensitivity analysis, and transparent documentation.
• Develop and share reproducible analytical workflows, scripts, and research methods through Git Hub and other open-science platforms.
• Archive final data, models, scripts, and analysis products in accessible scientific repositories or interactive dashboards.
• Publish scientific papers and reports, maintain regular communication with team members, and present results at regional and national meetings and conferences.
• Assist with fish and environmental field collection in freshwater, estuarine, and nearshore marine environments as needed, including travel in vehicles or boats.

• Extensive expertise in statistical modeling, probability, simulation, Bayesian statistics, mark-recapture analysis, survival analysis, migration modeling, and ecological data analysis.
• Advanced proficiency coding and conducting analyses in R.
• Experience with Stan and JAGS for Bayesian modeling and posterior inference.
• Strong computational skills manipulating large environmental datasets in Linux or other command-line environments, including shell scripting.
• Ability to interpret, review, or interface with C or C++ code in a scientific modeling context.
• Experience with reproducible research, open-science practices, Git Hub, model documentation, scientific repositories, and analytical QA/QC.
• Familiarity with Pacific salmon, river and hydropower systems, West Coast species and habitats managed by NOAA Fisheries, and fisheries management applications.
• Experience with fisheries acoustics, autonomous observing systems, NetCDF, MATLAB, Echoview, or other marine ecological data technologies is beneficial but not required unless assigned to relevant datasets.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including peer-reviewed publication, technical reporting, scientific presentations, and statistical consultation.
• Proficiency with Google Workspace and Microsoft Office and ability to manage a complex workload independently and collaboratively.

• PhD from an accredited institution in statistics, mathematics, fisheries, ecology, natural sciences, or a closely related quantitative discipline.
• A strong quantitative background with extensive formal coursework in statistics and probability is required.
• Ten or more years of directly relevant experience; advanced-degree substitutions may be applied consistent with the PWS.
• Demonstrated experience developing and applying advanced statistical models to fisheries, ecological, environmental, or marine research questions.
• Knowledge and applied experience in Bayesian statistics and mark-recapture methods is strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting NOAA Fisheries or a comparable federal fisheries science, hydropower, natural resource, academic, or research program is strongly preferred.
• Experience with Pacific salmon, West Coast anadromous fish, Columbia River Basin processes, survival and migration modeling, or NOAA COMPASS-related workflows is highly desirable.
• Must possess and maintain a valid driver's license and be able to…