Job Opportunity for Officer – GIS & Remote Sensing at IRRI in Varanasi

About IRRI

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the world’s premier research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger through rice science; improving the health and welfare of rice farmers and consumers; and protecting the rice-growing environment for future generations. IRRI is an independent, nonprofit, research and educational institute, founded in 1960 by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations with support from the Philippine government. The institute, headquartered in Los Baños, Philippines, has offices in 17 rice-growing countries in Asia and Africa, and over 1,000 staff.

Working with in-country partners, IRRI develops advanced rice varieties that yield more grain and better withstand pests and disease as well as flooding, drought, and other harmful effects of climate change

Job Purpose

The Sustainable Impact Platform delivers on key priorities of the IRRI Strategic Plan in the areas of Soil, Climate and Water, Adaptive Agronomy and Pest Ecology, Knowledge Tools, Livelihoods, Gender and Nutrition, Geospatial Science and Modeling, and Mechanization and Postharvest. This position will be based in the Digital Spatial Transformation of Landscapes Research Unit. 

Our mission is to design, build, and make available advanced research products that assist IRRI’s scientists in characterizing and targeting interventions for sustainable agricultural practices. Under the general supervision of the IRRI Lead for GIS & Remote Sensing, the selected candidate will support the development and validation of innovative remote sensing-based methods to identify rice-based cropping systems, management practices, irrigated area mapping, agro-advisory, land use and land cover change, stress mapping, and database management.

This position is based at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh and may only be filled by the permanent residents of India. 

Roles and Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development, testing and validation of innovative remote sensing-based methods (using SAR, thermal, multispectral remote sensing sensors) to identify rice based cropping systems and management practices.
• Support activities for, identifying and characterizing rice fallow and stress prone areas (flood, drought and salinity)
• Support in design and coordinate/implement strategies for ground data collection, data analysis and validation of geospatial outputs.
• Contribute to the writing of reports, and other communication material.
• Support multiple experiments/surveys and research projects as instructed by supervision team.
• Integrate remote sensing data with other relevant data sources, such as weather data, soil information, and crop management records
• Evaluate quality of input data, integration of different kinds of spatial and non-spatial datasets; manage and maintain database
• Support in timely proximal data collection from in-house experiments plots using relevant devices (including drone) on regular intervals.
• Able to travel at the project and other required sites, whenever required
• Inform regularly the immediate supervisor on the progress achieved of satellite image processing, analysis and GIS based activities
• Work closely with project team members to ensure full understanding of the scope, priorities, and deadlines of the activities.
• Prioritize tasks, meet deadlines, and manage multiple outputs simultaneously.
• Assist project leaders and/or collaborating partners to harmonize the undertakings of the team(s).
• Ability to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams, including field technicians, agronomists, and researchers
• In conjunction with the team leads, support planning, surveying and coordinating the materials and resources required to meet the research objectives of the group.
• Collect and store data generated from the analytics
• Support in the development work plans, milestones and implementation of research
• Support in preparing and assuring project reports and research publications.

Qualifications

• Master Degree in Remote Sensing or Geo-informatics or other related discipline with at least 2 years’ relevant work experience of application of Remote Sensing and GIS in agriculture OR Bachelor’s degree in Geo-informatics or Geospatial sciences with 5 years relevant work experience of application of Remote Sensing and GIS in agriculture

Skills Required

Mandatory:

• Has technical proficiency in remote sensing and GIS with proven skills mainly in vegetation phenology, crop type mapping, land use and land cover change, crop management and characterization, and database management   
• Proficiency in remote sensing image processing, GIS software’s (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS), and data analysis tools (e.g., ENVI, ERDAS, SNAP and Geomatics)
• Strong understanding of agricultural practices, crop physiology, plant health, and relevant agricultural parameters. 
• Able to handle, process and visualize large spatial vector and gridded, datasets (e.g., Weather datasets and climate forecasts)

In addition to the base salary mentioned above, IRRI also offers the following allowances:

• House-Rent Allowance:IRRI provides a house rent allowance of 40% of base pay per month.
• Transport Allowance:A monthly transport allowance of INR 4,000
• Dearness Allowance:One Hundred and Thirteen percent (113%) of employee’s base pay.
• Leave Travel Allowance (LTA):One-month base pay per annum, on availing minimum 2 days of vacation leave
• Education Allowance: INR 1000/- per child per month (limited 2 children)

IRRI offers a highly extensive employee benefits package inclusive of globally-covered medical insurance, retirement plan, life and accident insurance and other allowances. Join our team and be part of our story!

Please note only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.