WILDLABS groups like this one are where conservation tech community members from every career stage gather to ask questions, share resources, and network. If you're just getting started in your #tech4wildlife career, making a career change from the tech world into conservation, or you're a student finding your path in the field, the Early Career group wants to meet you!
Likewise, the Early Career group is an excellent place for our conservation tech experts to share opportunities and resources with a wide audience of people who will make a big impact in conservation in the coming years.
How can you get started in our Early Career group?
- Visit our Welcome Thread and tell us about yourself and your career goals!
- Drop into our Share Your Master's Project thread to ask questions, share your updates, get advice, and discuss your project goals with people who can help you make progress
- Network with our group's regular events like Happy Hour, launching later in 2022
The Early Career group is looking for an organizer for a 6-month period to plan networking events and help conservation tech students from around the world connect! If you're interested in volunteering as group organizer, email [email protected] with a brief summary of your early career conservation tech experience so far, and with an idea for one event or activity you'd propose for the group. We hope to hear from you!
Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
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- 237 Discussions
- 13 Groups
A marine research intern and science communicator with experience in photography, filmmaking, and collaborating on multi-disciplinary and community-centered marine research focusing on: fisheries management, seagrass ecosystems, and ocean literacy
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- 1 Discussions
- 4 Groups
I am a conservation enthusiast who aims at learning more about conservation and its technology. My research interests lie in wildlife conservation in anthropogenic landscapes.
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- 0 Discussions
- 8 Groups
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- 3 Discussions
- 10 Groups
WILDLABS
I'm the WILDLABS Research Lead at WWF-US
- 4 Resources
- 46 Discussions
- 23 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 2 Groups
Software developer at Octophin Digital and student at Aberystwyth University. Bug Fanatic🪲
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- 0 Discussions
- 19 Groups
Stanford University
Doctoral Research at Stanford University | Interested in data science and observational approaches for issues in coastal health
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- 0 Discussions
- 8 Groups
I studied sustainability and worked in the international dev sector, I have tech skills in UX, data-analytics and graph modelling, can prototype web services and want to help in nature conservation.
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- 13 Discussions
- 4 Groups
BEE Grad Student at Oregon State University. Analyzing optimal management network structure in socio-ecological systems. Follow me @c_texana on Twitter
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- 1 Discussions
- 2 Groups
I'm a PhD student and the main topic of my research project is large carnivores' circadian rhythms. Also, I am passionate about statistical modeling, specifically through a Bayesian approach.
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- 1 Discussions
- 6 Groups
Machine Learning Engineer specialised in computer vision and a passion for conservation and rebuilding.
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- 0 Discussions
- 5 Groups
The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated UAS pilot and geospatial analyst to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs,...
10 August 2022
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The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs, both...
10 August 2022
1
Careers
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is seeking a new Research Associate to join their Conservation Technology Lab team.
29 July 2022
Applications are now open for the CLP 2023 Team Awards.
19 July 2022
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Dr. Karen Holl's group at the University of California, Santa Cruz
4 June 2022
September 2022
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi David.We're interacting with a lot of conservation organizations, more in the area of environmental monitoring/restoration than wildlife. However in regards to you're questions... |
+7
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Community Base, Early Career | 4 weeks ago | |
The title of that article is "File Not Found". That threw me off since I totally thought I hit a 404 and the article didn't exist anymore. It's super interesting though so don't... |
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Early Career | 1 month ago | |
Hey all!I am Ayush, a core team member of my school's Robotics Club (Center For Innovation, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras). There... |
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Drones, Sensors, Wildlife Crime, Early Career | 1 month 1 week ago | |
I'm in the early stages of my marine conservation career and have also been applying for jobs. Being part of such a group would be such a great opportunity to give and receive... |
+1
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Early Career | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Hi Eric, Dropping in a reply we had over on Linkedin here. Annoyingly I can't do a snazzy embed of the comment - will fix that!Anton Baotic shared: I guess it depends on... |
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Acoustic Monitoring, Early Career | 1 month 3 weeks ago | |
Hello everyone! I am currently a senior undergraduate student working on landscape genetics research using RAD seq data and GIS data. The organism we've been studying... |
+8
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Early Career | 2 months 4 weeks ago | |
Job available at the University of Antwerp in the field of wireless / IoT / low power communication. The group works on a range of projects... |
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Early Career | 5 months 1 week ago | |
Job description WPS seeks a game developer to work with our videography team and existing library of wildlife 360 video content to... |
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Early Career | 6 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi ! I am joy - based in London. I am a techie/hardware engineer /software engineer who became an entrepreneur. Over a period of 10... |
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Early Career | 9 months 1 week ago | |
Thanks so much @skatewing It is impressive to notice that almost all are outside of EU, and my concern is the working rights to collaborate with US or UK organisations... |
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Early Career | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Shoot me your e-mail! We're looking at starting a new course soon if there's enough interest. |
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Early Career | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Hi, anyone interested in joining: send me a message with your e-mail! |
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Early Career | 1 year 5 months ago |
Research Technician - Unoccupied Aircraft Systems Pilot and Geospatial Analyst
10 August 2022 at 10:40pm
3yr Postdoctoral Associate: Remote Sensing and Unoccupied Aircraft Systems
10 August 2022 at 05:29pm
Postdoctoral Associate - Remote Sensing & Unoccupied Aircraft Systems
10 August 2022 at 01:44pm
The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs, both internally and externally.
Research Associate

29 July 2022 at 09:34pm
ONLINE COURSE: Stakeholder Engagement for Wildlife Conservation
26 July 2022 at 02:43pm
Conservation Leadership Programme 2023 Team Awards

19 July 2022 at 12:04am
Academia folks: what kind of tech training/exposure are you giving to your undergrads?
12 July 2022 at 08:34pm
13 July 2022 at 08:21pm
I just had a conversation with a professor in my department who's had students doing RasPi-based camera traps as a project in a REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program, which seems really cool. But unfortunately it's only getting that exposure for a relatively small portion of the total undergraduate student body.
The other thing I wonder is if the ways that students are growing up in their relationship with tech is changing how we need to teach things. This article really challenged some of the things I've found most aggravating in teaching students things in R or ArcGIS https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
14 July 2022 at 01:26am
The title of that article is "File Not Found". That threw me off since I totally thought I hit a 404 and the article didn't exist anymore. It's super interesting though so don't get thrown off by the title.
Notable quote:
“Take their phones away and get ‘em on Windows 98.”
Also, that article makes me feel so oooooold....
A Triphibian Surveillance Vehicle
9 July 2022 at 02:23pm
Looking for folks to do resume/CV reviews
30 June 2022 at 02:39pm
30 June 2022 at 04:10pm
I really appreciate the positive feedback this has gotten, and I'll look to sending stuff around. In part I'm looking to work with other folks who are mid-job-hunt so that I can try to pay it forward a little by reviewing their resumes as they review mine.
30 June 2022 at 07:43pm
Hey David, I like the idea and would much like to exchange feedback. As an early career conservationist, I am glad i saw this thread.
1 July 2022 at 11:40am
I'm in the early stages of my marine conservation career and have also been applying for jobs. Being part of such a group would be such a great opportunity to give and receive good feedback.
Conservation Tech Career Pathways - what do you want to know?
17 June 2022 at 01:30pm
19 July 2022 at 08:27pm
+ 1 on the above comment; new to wildLabs, and the exact title of this post is what got me here as I was looking for ways I can contribute to Biodiversity conservation. Excited for the series to come out
19 July 2022 at 09:07pm
Hello there, Im cofounder and CTO over at Birda - think a cross between Strava for birdwatching & Pokemon GO in real life. Happy to answer any questions....
For reference heres some job specs of ours
Cheers,
Dom
20 July 2022 at 02:14am
Hi David.
We're interacting with a lot of conservation organizations, more in the area of environmental monitoring/restoration than wildlife. However in regards to you're questions, this is what we're seeing. Also please remember, it's more from a commercial point of a view than academic.
- what sectors want R vs Python if you do programming/data science
It's probably best to know both. A lot of conservation organizations internally use R, but a lot of the tools that are coming out are python-focused. This is especially true with the machine learning tools.
- how to best represent all the weird random skills we end up picking up doing our work on a resume/CV
I think it's better to keep a focused CV that clearly expresses what you're looking for or your specialty. Rather than listing all the random skills that you've picked up, I recommend setting up either a portfolio or website where you can talk about all those additional details. For field researchers deploying technology, you have to be extremely resourceful so it's best to highlight that in a blog/portfolio website where you can explain more about what led you to come up with that solution, how you came about it, and the outcome. This would be extremely interesting to someone doing further research on you in anticipation of hiring.
- comparison of private sector / public service / ngo / academia as workplaces
I can't speak much for academia. From the NGO's we're talking to, the largest ones are kind of early in their conservation technology adoption. Nature Conservancy has a relatively mature conservation technology group that's well funded. Same for WWF. Other orgs we've talked to are more like dipping their toes in the water and often bring outside people to implement specific projects rather than maintaining their own internal resources. Smaller orgs either have no conservation tech departments or fledgling ones. I think many orgs are trying to determine if they need dedicated conservation tech resources and trying to define what that means to them.
In private sector, if you have programming skills, you'd probably end up being a programmer. This is because software customization and improvement is a never ending task in commercial software. In most orgs, they'd likely expect python since it's more general purpose unless they explicitly ask for R.
- how to identify sectors where there's going to be a lot of demand
In terms of wildlife conservation and wildlife conservation technology, the major data collection tools seem to be camera traps, bioacoustic recorders, trackers, GIS, and increasingly drones. The data processing tools seem to be R, python, and familiar with emerging ML tools for data processing.
The common thread in all of this is that ecologists are drowning in a deluge of data. So being proficient in managing, analyzing, and processing data, especially in building tools to increase efficiency and productivity is probably one of the more desirable skills. Of course expertise in a specific field is important, but ecology is looking more like it also requires general purpose IT/programming skills.
Akiba
13 July 2022 at 01:26pm
Pretty much all biostats classes in higher ed will be taught in R, you'd have to separately take a Python class. But even that would require the knowledge that you might need Python at all, which is not something I realized until far later in my career (in undergrad, it was what the computer science people took so how could it possibly be helpful for me yadda yadda). I say this too having been an undergrad right around when the big data revolution really took off, so I'm not sure what kind of curricular changes have been made following that. At my undergrad & Master's universities at least, there have not been any. One biostats course required for each, taught in R.
In terms of tech like hardware, ecology/conservation programs seem woefully under-focused on this. You can take a conservation class that might talk it about it for one lecture or a genetics class where you talk about eDNA, etc. but it doesn't seem as embedded into the overall curriculum as much as it should be.
I of course am only speaking from my own experiences and those around me who have come from different universities. I know there are some universities doing it better, for example Andrew Schulz teaches a Conservation Tech class at Georgia Tech. Florida Tech has a Conservation Tech Master's program, as does Liverpool John Moore in the UK and Holland College in Canada. Pacific Union College also has a Conservation Tech concentration in their Bio department.
There are also centres within universities that are focused on certain aspects of conservation tech - we have a bunch listed in the Conservation Tech Directory (you can filter by academia).