Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's (DNRC) mission is to help ensure that Montana's land and water resources provide benefits for present and future generations.

The DNRC believes employees are their most important asset. The DNRC empowers employees to exercise professional judgment in carrying out their duties. Employees are provided with the training and tools necessary to achieve the mission. Both team effort and individual employee expertise are supported and sustained.

Program Overview:

The State of Montana is looking for a Remote Sensing Analyst to join our team to support the Trust Lands Management Division (TLMD) within the Department of Natural Resources (DNRC). Our division manages approximately 5.2 million surface and 6.2 subsurface acres of trust lands for the benefit of the common schools and other endowed institutions. TLMD resources such as agriculture and grazing, recreation, forest products, minerals, and real estate are managed to produce revenues for trust beneficiaries (predominantly public schools) while considering environmental factors and protecting the future income generating capacity of the land. GIS is an integral tool in land management. Our GIS data supports policy and field level decisions. We strive to make GIS data and collection methods accessible, effective, and sustainable. Please consider joining our GIS team to support Montana’s Trust Lands.

About The Position:

The Remote Sensing Analyst (GIS Specialist 3) will provide direct support to Forest Management Bureau (FMB) business workflows. This includes collaboration with Office of Information Technology (OIT) GIS and other TLMD Program leads to design, develop, maintain, and provided expert consultation on statistically defensible forest and vegetative inventory sampling and land cover estimation on state trust lands. The Analyst will use auxiliary remote sensing data such as LiDAR (light detection and ranging), PhoDAR (structure from motion photogrammetry), multi-spectral imaging, and radar. We are looking for someone with an interest in forest management and natural resources conservation, as well as a deep interest in spatial data and the power that accurate and organized data and analysis can have on an agency’s success. The position works closely with our specialists, field users, teammates, and OIT. This position functions as a subject matter expert on Remote Sensing and is a project team member on many high-level division projects and may lead technical experts to collect raw data through field and remotely sensed measurements to compile forest stand parameters at the micro and macro scales. The position will acquire new remote sensing data to support modeling and mapping to facilitate imputation and interpolation.

We are ESRI based and deploy field-based tools such as Field Maps and Survey123 in addition to a suite of AGOL based web applications including, but not limited to webmaps, dashboards, and experiences. Trust Lands maintains and manages several statewide datasets both AGOL hosted and spatial database engine (SDE) based. We are looking for an individual with an attention to detail, strong organizational skills, willingness to learn, and aid our subject matter experts in mobile technology, SDE, and Trust Lands GIS data infrastructure.

This position is based in Missoula with the opportunity to work remotely for a percentage of your week upon approval. Specific conditions will be outlined as part of the job offer and must adhere to state policy.

About Our GIS Informatics Section:

This position will be part of a collaborative four person GIS Informatics Section to promote a reliable, innovative, and committed team. The objective of our Informatics Section is to build, maintain, and communicate our data and data systems. Success in this position will come through immersion in how we collect and manage data and collaborating closely with specialists, field users, and OIT.

Currently, our team members operate out of both Missoula and Helena, so team communication is key to success. All team members work with staff and resources statewide. The Informatics team also works with a talented set of multi-disciplined, natural resource GIS users across the agency. While a major duty of this position is managing spatial data, this position invites you to make site visits and connect with field users to help you design products that meet their needs and to fully understand how TLMD workflows and processes support our agency. This position has the benefit of connecting directly with our users to fully understand how we conduct business throughout the agency and provide the support required to be successful.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, maintain, and provide expert consultation on computerized systems to conduct statistically defensible forest inventory sampling, mapping, imputation, and interpolation.
• Function as the lead technical expert on complex, process-based field sampling and GIS remote sensing.
• Strategic planning development for short and long-range plans and strategies for statewide informatics and remote sensing activities.
• Develop data collection protocols, raster analysis, develop solutions/protocol for updating inventory data with training data, keeping inventory data up to date with photo raster analysis models, LiDAR, etc.
• Geospatial data building and modeling, including the use of scripting languages to automate repetitive tasks.
• Meet with field and contract staff to provide on-the-ground review of remotely sensed datasets, tailor data acquisition to the needs of field staff, and provide training on issues such as appropriate use and limitations of remotely sensed data.
• Develop and maintain Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications within the TLMD (Coordinate with bureau, area, and field staff to schedule and implement UAV flights to acquire high resolution imagery at the project level.) 
• Assists with quality assurance reviews of field inventory data to ensure accuracy and validity and determine contractor tolerance with error and specifications (i.e., review field data and validate it through statistical analysis).
• Assess the ongoing effectiveness of program policies and administrative rules and assists in the development of new and/or revised policies to ensure consistent and legally defensible compliance with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations as well as effective program management and operations.
• Leads, coordinates, collaborates, and manages GIS projects for the TLMD as well as participate on a variety of planning committees, work groups and project teams.
• Develop lands resource data collection protocols, processes, and plans for economic analyses for Trust Lands projects to provide income comparisons of alternatives.
• Design, develop, configure, and maintain web-based and mobile applications using ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Server environments.
• Lead GIS related projects as necessary.