Job Description

African Parks is offering a full-time, 12-month internship position within its Business Intelligence Unit. This role is for candidates excited about analyzing and visualizing data to inform decision-making or impact evaluation in conservation, and helping teams in protected areas to collect and access their data efficiently. If you have started to develop data engineering, visualization, and/or analysis skills, and are looking for a stimulating environment where you can learn further on the job while contributing to innovative solutions that help conservation become more data-driven, we encourage you to read further.





The candidate would need to be based at the African Parks head office in Bryanston, Johannesburg. We therefore only accept applications from candidates with a South African nationality, residency, or with a valid work permit. We are looking for somebody who can do 32-40 hours per week and is keen to come into the office to benefit from exchanges within the team and with other colleagues.

Responsibilities

Design and develop standardized dashboards & analytical reports for the African Parks portfolio

These data products will be based on large datasets largely fed through a Fabric data warehousing environment or SharePoint spreadsheets. The type of data varies but largely falls under four main departments - finance & fundraising, tourism, community, and biodiversity conservation (includes security). Data products will primarily be developed using Microsoft Power BI and ArcGIS, with some coding in R and/or Python. This will serve to support park management teams in making strategic, data-driven decisions. An example could be to unpack the interface between human-wildlife conflict and animal movement data, or patrol and poaching data.

Support the development, optimization, and roll-out of data collection tools

This includes writing guidelines and technical manuals, providing training to park teams, and designing surveys, quick captures or other data collection tools.

Developing and managing automated data pipelines

This may include ensuring data from surveys in Esri Survey123 feeds into Esri Webmaps/Dashboard/StoryMaps, or data from SharePoint spreadsheets is appropriately shown in PowerBI dashboards. If a shared interest exists, this part of the role may be expanded to involve work on data pipelines in Microsoft Fabric and data models in PowerBI.

Ensure data integrity by auditing and cleaning key data from the protected areas

This includes managing geospatial layers and databases and detecting outliers or discrepancies for park teams to validate.

Managing user accounts in customized apps, Esri tools, and Power BI

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Updating user roles and permissions to ensure that park staff have the appropriate access and privileges based on their responsibilities. This includes assigning and adjusting roles to align with data sensitivity and operational needs.

Researching open-source datasets and the latest advancements in Tech or AI for integration into African Parks' tools.

Digitizing and managing spatial datasets and databases across the African Parks portfolio.

Pursuing or completed a degree in the Sciences or Tech/IT - preferably ecological, conservation, sustainability, informatics, computer, or social sciences; A passion for nature conservation and supporting local communities, and a keenness to apply knowledge to tangible work being done in protected areas across Africa; Skilled in analyzing and cleaning large data sets; Familiar with coding languages for analysis and/or integrations, like, in order of preference: DAX & M (Power BI), R, Python, SQL Working knowledge of geospatial data tools, preferably ArcGIS Pro and the Esri online environment; Keen attention to detail and desire to take ownership of projects and datasets; Good data visualization, reporting, and presentation skills; Affinity and experience with ecological data collection; Experience in designing training materials and training individuals/groups with various skill levels; A proactive, solution-oriented attitude and a hunger to learn and contribute to exciting, innovative data-based projects in the conservation space.

Desirable

Clarity in spoken and written communication in English; Comfortable working in small teams but also working on tasks individually; Experience with designing dashboards (ideally PowerBI and ArcGIS); Experience in Google Earth Engine and SharePoint; Multilingual - French and/or Portuguese * Resilient, pragmatic, and results oriented