About SERCA

The SMART EarthRanger Conservation Alliance, SERCA, brings together SMART and EarthRanger to strengthen conservation area management. Together, the two initiatives already support more than 2,500 sites in over 100 countries.

SERCA combines field-based experience, capacity support, technology, and a global support network so that governments, conservation organisations and frontline teams can collect, connect and use information to plan, manage, monitor and adapt more effectively. It is a major opportunity to reshape how conservation is supported at scale and to translate better data, tools and capacity into lasting improvements in conservation management.

Find out more at www.serca.org

The role

SERCA is seeking a Chief Product Officer to work with the Executive Director and Alliance leadership to ensure SERCA is fit for purpose: supporting effective conservation management in the realities of the sites it serves. You will bring together practitioner insight, evidence on management needs, product vision, technical delivery, implementation, capacity and adoption so that the SERCA suite can be implemented well and support sound management decisions.

You will coordinate product direction and priorities across the SERCA suite, helping to ensure that its different elements work together and respond to practitioner needs. You will have specific Product Owner responsibility for SERCA Desktop.

This is a strategic, integrative product leadership role with close engagement in delivery. It will suit someone who is equally comfortable discussing options with engineers, listening to practitioners in the field and advising senior partners on the trade-offs required to deliver a credible, useful and implementable conservation support system.

For all SERCA responsibilities, the role reports to the SERCA Executive Director. North Carolina Zoological Society manages employment administration. One year contract, renewable annually. Salary range ($80,000 - 100,000 USD) depending on the candidate.

What you will do

• Keep the full practitioner and management workflow in view, including field monitoring and operational data collection, analysis, reporting, planning and adaptive management. Ensure product decisions are informed by the practical realities of collecting, connecting and using information in the field.
• Commission or coordinate proportionate practitioner and user research, ensuring that field realities, including offline and underrepresented users, inform material decisions.
• Lead an integrated product direction and portfolio roadmap across the SERCA suite, setting priorities using practitioner evidence, conservation value, adoption needs and delivery realities.
• Act as Product Owner for SERCA Desktop, leading its product vision, requirements, backlog priorities and release planning.
• Work with colleagues across the Alliance to identify cross-product dependencies, trade-offs and readiness needs for implementation, including the training, support, adoption and communication implications of product choices.
• Keep abreast of emerging opportunities and challenges, including artificial intelligence, and consider their implications for SERCA products, capacity, impact and implementation.
• Provide concise advice to the Executive Director and SERCA leadership on material choices, risks, funding or capacity gaps, and decisions requiring escalation.

What you will bring

• Significant experience at the intersection of conservation management, field implementation and digital products, or in a closely related field.
• The ability to translate complex user needs and organisational priorities into clear requirements, priorities and decisions.
• Experience working across technology, implementation, practitioners and senior partners in a multi-stakeholder environment.
• Sound judgement on trade offs, including knowing when a decision requires evidence, escalation or a clear deferral.
• Direct practical conservation field implementation experience, with a strong understanding of the realities faced by practitioners and managers.
• Experience working across the full range of conservation settings, from well-resourced organisations to those operating with very limited staff, equipment, connectivity or support capacity.
• Experience designing, implementing or supporting systems that connect field data collection with organisation-level analysis, reporting and management action across multiple sites or teams.
• Sufficient technical fluency to work productively with engineers and technical leads, ask the right questions and make informed product decisions.
• An open, pragmatic approach to emerging technology, including artificial intelligence, with the judgement to consider both its potential contribution and its challenges.
• Experience working across distributed international teams, with willingness and ability to travel (up to approximately 40% of working time) internationally, including to field locations, as a material part of the role. Familiarity with SMART, EarthRanger or comparable conservation data systems is valuable.