Data Science Associate, Ethiopia, Restore Local

The role can be based in the WRI Country Office in Ethiopia. This is a hybrid position. You will need to be in office at least 8 days per month and living within reasonable commuting distance of the office. This role with require periodic travel within Ethiopia to engage government partners and project sites.

About the Program

WRI’s Restoration Initiative informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land. WRI’s restoration work in Africa supports the goals of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), where countries have committed to restore 100 million hectares of degraded and deforested land.

In alignment with WRI Africa’s Food, Land and Water (FLW) team, the Restore Local initiative works across sectors including finance, monitoring, policy, economics, and equity to catalyze funding for locally led restoration.

Restore Local focuses across four priority African landscapes spanning Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and—the most recent addition—Ethiopia's Rift Valley. By investing in 280+ local restoration projects and supporting government, Restore Local has built standardized processes for building strong policy enabling environments for restoration, identifying priority areas for investment, screening project proposals to ensure that they are high-quality and locally led, and monitoring and verifying their outcomes. The RestorationWorks online platform brings these processes to life through step-by-step playbooks.

As a global leader in restoration, the government of Ethiopia has established The Green Legacy and Degraded Landscape Restoration Special Fund, a landmark opportunity which designates 0.5-1% of the federal revenue to restoration under the Green Legacy Initiative, which has planted more than 56 billion saplings since 20198. Catalyzed by this policy, Restore Local is expanding to include Ethiopia’s Rift Valley to support the government in the implementation of the Special Fund in the lead up to UNFCCC COP32, hosted in Addis Ababa in November 2027.

Job Highlight

As the Data Science Associate, you will help build and manage the information system that underpins the Special Fund. Partnering closely with staff from the Ethiopian Forestry Development (EFD), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Ministry of Planning and Development (MoPD), Wondo Genet College of Forestry and Natural Resources (WGCFNR), the Space Science and Geospatial Institute (SSGI), and other relevant partners, you will co-develop tools that help government partners prioritize restoration investments, gather structured data on proposed projects, and report on progress at both the project and national levels.

You will move fluidly between geospatial analysis, software-adjacent problem-solving, and government partnership. You will bring GIS expertise, AI-enabled coding skills, and experience scoping the development of online systems for geospatial monitoring to help build a system that allows for unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability for this national restoration fund.

You will jointly report to the Senior Technical Advisor & Ethiopia Lead, based in Ethiopia, and the Senior Manager of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification, based in Rwanda. You will work closely with WRI’s experts in mapping, monitoring, policy, finance, product development, and communications that work across Africa, Europe, and North America t0 support the flagship Special Fund.

What you will do:

Product Management & Stakeholder Engagement ( 40% )

Co-manage the information system for the Green Legacy and Degraded Landscape Restoration Special Fund that supports investment prioritization, structured project-level data collection, and progress reporting. Important stakeholders include EFD, MoA, MoF, SSGI and WGCFNR.

Work with the Product team to scope and help design system architecture and data workflows, translating government partners’ needs into clear technical requirements for RestorationWorks platform developers, data engineers, and other technical partners.

Scope with government and technical partners the monitoring strategy for the Special Fund, with a focus on data sharing and interoperability, to ensure the system meets the needs of both national and sub-national stakeholders.

Build effective working relationships with Ethiopian government counterparts, providing training and technical support so ministry staff can use, adapt, and maintain the system.

Contribute to the drafting of funding proposals, providing relevant data and monitoring insights and contextual information on Ethiopia's Rift Valley landscape.

Represent WRI in national monitoring discussions, working groups, and technical committees related to forest and landscape restoration.

Geospatial Data Collection & Analysis ( 40% )

Oversee the quality and integrity of geospatial data submitted on the proposed Special Fund projects, correcting errors by manipulating polygons using GIS software and satellite basemaps and editing attribute information.

Manage collected project and monitoring data across WRI and government data platforms (e.g., RestorationWorks, Airtable, government databases).

Conduct statistical and geospatial analyses using remote sensing datasets and field-collected data to help government partners prioritize investment areas nationwide – and report on overall progress of the Green Legacy Initiative.

Evaluate data products and system outputs for completeness and accuracy using manual and automated methods, including AI-enabled coding tools and scripts to speed up quality checks and processing.

Continuously refine data validation procedures so project- and national-level teams can use the data confidently for outcome analyses and reporting.

Produce maps, dashboards, and analyses that support project-level and nationwide progress reporting on the Green Legacy Initiative.

Research & Communications (20% )

Conduct research on the latest geospatial data, tools, and methods relevant to restoration monitoring in Ethiopia, and evaluate their applicability to the Special Fund’s needs.

Develop and deliver training and knowledge-transfer materials to build government partners’ skills in geospatial data collection, quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC), and use of the information system.

Contribute to internal and external communications materials, including articles, technical notes, and progress summaries, that capture lessons learned from Ethiopia’s implementation of the Green Legacy Initiative.

Explore and pilot innovative approaches, including AI-enabled coding and automation, to optimize data collection, quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC), and system maintenance.

What you will need:

Education: You have a bachelor’s degree in GIS, geography, forestry, environmental science, computer science, data science, or a related field.

Experience: You have 6+ years of professional experience in GIS, remote sensing, and/or data science, including experience working with non-specialists on how to use geospatial or data tools to solve their problems.

Experience designing and launching data analysis projects from scratch, and developing data pipelines for large and complex geospatial datasets.

Experience scoping the development of, or directly building, online systems or platforms for geospatial data collection and monitoring (e.g., ODK/Kobo Collect-based tools, Survey CTO or custom web applications).

Programming skills in Python (e.g., NumPy, Pandas, GeoPandas) and/or Google Earth Engine; experience using AI-enabled coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot or similar) to accelerate development and automate workflows.

Experience using Geographic Information System (GIS) software such as ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, or GRASS GIS to collect, edit, and analyze spatial data.

Experience in remote sensing, with the ability to interpret and create spa