Job Description

Description

Who We Are

The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) is a self-sustaining nonprofit enterprise. Founded to help bridge the gap between policy and practice our mission is to enable people and the planet to meet the pace of change by expanding access to new technologies that power more sustainable and equitable outcomes.

We are a fully remote team of award-winning professionals with decades of applied expertise and end-to-end GIS capabilities. By embracing whole-system thinking and state-of-the-art technology we enable partners across public private and nonprofit sectors to tackle complex real-world challengeslike housing affordability ecosystem conservation water management and sustainable infrastructurewith greater clarity.

Our work liberates and connects key information creates nuanced pictures of complex situations and makes land water and social data easier to use understand and act on. We use tools like satellite data and artificial intelligence to deliver insights for impact.

At CGS we believe that technology can be a tool for positive change. We are dedicated to building a diverse team that represents the communities and systems we live and work in. If youre excited about this role but dont meet every listed qualification we encourage you to apply. We value potential curiosity and lived experiences and know a more inclusive team makes us a stronger organization.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use taxation and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946 the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative nonpartisan approaches to land as a solution to economic social and environmental challenges. Through education training publications and events we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide. We organize our work around three impact areas: land and water; land and fiscal systems; and land and communities. We envision a world where cities and regions prosper and benefit from coordinated land use planning and public finance; where communities thrive from efficient and equitable allocation of limited land resources; and where stewardship of land and water resources ensures a livable future. We work globally with locations in Cambridge Massachusetts; Washington DC; Phoenix Arizona; and Beijing China.

Position Overview:

The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) is seeking a Senior Manager Cloud Architecture to serve as the lead backend and cloud architect for a complex multi-year federal program in addition to working on a second program focused on water reservoir system analysis and data interoperability.

Reporting to the Associate Director of Data Engineering the Senior Manager Cloud Architecture will serve as the technical and managerial lead for backend development on a federal program dedicating most of their time to this work. Their remaining time will aid other CGS projects where this role will contribute in shaping technical strategy and system design across programs. Under the guidance of Data Engineering and Science leadership they will define scalable backend architecture shared cloud services and production systems that support data ingestion metadata and discovery large-scale geospatial processing model execution quality assurance and validation and deliver data and services to users and partners translating program requirements into technical strategy and standards that can extend beyond a single program.

This is a hands-on engineering role that combines backend software development cloud architecture platform engineering DevOps security and cost optimization. This role will oversee a small team of backend developers providing technical direction empowerment and mentorship to the team. The successful candidate will work closely with data scientists AI engineers GIS professionals project managers and external partners to turn complex technical workflows into maintainable observable reproducible and well-governed systems.

What You Will Do:

Federal Backend Architecture and Technical Delivery

• Responsible for backend and cloud engineering work on a federal program coordinating closely with technical leads project manager partner organizations and federal stakeholders.
• Translate program milestones analytical workflows user needs performance requirements and partner interfaces into technical architecture implementation plans and estimates documenting decisions and progress where needed.
• Identify architectural dependencies performance constraints delivery risks and technical debt early; recommend practical options and tradeoffs to project and technical leadership.
• Design modular backend architecture that connects data ingestion cataloging geospatial processing machine learning quality assurance metadata and discovery and data or service delivery.
• Define service boundaries APIs data schemas workflow patterns and integration contracts that allow components developed by multiple teams and partners to work together reliably.
• Build shared platform components and integration layers that reduce duplicative one-off pipelines and aid reuse across regions analytical methods and future CGS projects.
• Design and implement secure scalable cloud architectures for large geospatial datasets distributed processing machine learning databases APIs and backend services.
• Select appropriate combinations of containers batch computing serverless services workflow orchestration managed databases and other cloud capabilities based on workload requirements.
• Contribute technical estimates architecture narratives implementation plans progress reporting and documentation required for a complex federally funded program.

Technical Collaboration & Team Management

• Directly supervise and empower backend data development staff overseeing their day-to-day work performance and professional growth.
• Delegate and manage backend implementation work across team to ensure work is scoped appropriately and aligned with overall envisioned architecture.
• Work with leadership to establish cloud and backend engineering practices that are reproducible across projects.
• Communicate technical options risks cost implications and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and nontechnical colleagues.

Backend Software Engineering and Systems Integration

• Design and oversee the implementation of production-quality backend services APIs data-access layers workflow services and reusable software components using Python or another appropriate language.
• Build services that enhance functions such as data submission and ingestion metadata management job scheduling and status geospatial processing model outputs validation status search and discovery and data delivery.
• Work with relational and spatial databases object storage queues and event systems caching API gateways authentication and authorization and other backend infrastructure.
• Evaluate when to build adapt open-source technologies or use managed services based on mission needs delivery timelines security maintainability and total cost.

Cloud Infrastructure Management

• Provision and manage compute object storage databases networking identity and access management secrets logging and related cloud services using infrastructure as code.
• Establish clear tagging budgeting cost allocation and monitoring practices so cloud spending can be understood by project environment workload and program activity.
• Continuously optimize cloud cost and performance through rightsizing autoscaling storage lifecycle policies scheduling caching serverless or spot capacity and other practical FinOps approaches.
• Support separate development testing staging and production environments while maintaining reproducibility and minimizing unnecessary infrastructure expense.

DevOps Reliability Security and Operations

• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure backend applications data workflows and analytical services.
• Containerize services and workflows using Docker and support orchestration through managed container platforms Kubernetes batch systems or serverless services as appropriate.
• Implement logging metrics tracing monitoring alerting backups recovery procedures and operational runbooks.
• Implement security controls (least-privilege access encryption secrets management) in alignment with CGS and Lincoln Institute security policy.
• Support the technical documentation access controls change records data-handling practices and other evidence needed for federal partner client and Lincoln Institute requirements.
• Troubleshoot backend performance reliability networking permissions data movement and deployment issues across development and production environments.

What You Will Need:

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent professional experience in computer science software engineering information systems engineering geography or a related technical field.
• 5 years of experience in backend software engineering cloud engineering platform engineering DevOps site reliability engineering or a closely related role.
• 5 years of experience solving geospatial cloud architecture problems.
• 2 years of experience successfully empowering and developing staff.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building production backend services APIs data platforms or distributed systems using Python or another modern programming language.
• Strong hands-on experience designing deploying and operating production workloads in AWS GCP or other cloud platforms.
• Experience architecting data-intensive or compute-intensive systems that must process large volumes of data reliably and efficiently.
• Demonstrated experience with AWS services such as S3 Batch ECS or EKS Lambda Step Functions RDS or Aurora API Gateway IAM and CloudWatch.
• Experience with relational databases and SQL including data modeling query optimization and application integration; PostgreSQL or PostGIS experience is particularly relevant.
• Working knowledge of Esri enterprise GIS architectures with the ability to support licensing decisions enterprise deployments and alignment of Esri products and user access with organizational needs.
• Working knowledge of geospatial data standards and architecture (e.g. OGC standards) and how they inform system design.
• Experience with infrastructure as code CI/CD containers Linux automated testing deployment automation and production monitoring.
• Working knowledge of cloud networking identity and access management secrets storage compute databases queues APIs and observability.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing and optimizing cloud performance and cost including the ability to explain cost drivers and recommend practical improvements.
• Experience with Git/GitHub and collaborative software-development practices including code review and technical documentation.
• Strong troubleshooting systems-thinking and communication skills including the ability to explain architecture risks and tradeoffs clearly.
• Ability to work effectively with multidisciplinary teams and external partners in a fast-moving fully remote environment.
• U.S. Citizen or legally authorized to work in the U.S. with no need for future sponsorship.

Helpful Experience (Nice to Have):

• Experience working with geospatial APIs and data interoperability standards such as pygeoapi
• Experience building backend systems for Earth observation environmental modeling raster processing scientific computing or other large-scale analytical workflows.
• Experience with workflow and data orchestration tools such as Airflow Prefect Dagster Argo or comparable technologies.
• Experience with MLOps model registries experiment tracking GPU workloads distributed training or scalable inference.
• Experience supporting government or federally funded programs and associated security documentation reporting data-handling or compliance requirements.
• Experience with metadata catalogs data discovery systems provenance persistent identifiers or interoperable data services.
• AWS certification or demonstrated experience with FinOps disaster recovery production incident management or security architecture.
• Experience supporting government nonprofit consulting or mission-driven technical projects.

Compensation Overview

The salary market range for this role is $96000-$115000 depending on level of education years of experience and other relevant qualifications. Please be sure to review our benefits overview below as the four-day workweek 15% retirement the Institute paying 90-95% of the medical plan costs and 100% the dental plan costs create a total compensation package for this role between $130000 - $155000 roughly. A member of HR would be happy to make a side-by-side comparison of your benefits to help with your assessment of this opportunity compared to others.

How to Apply

Please submit a cover letter and resume directly on the Lincoln Institutes website. The cover letter should succinctly describe your interest in joining the CGS team; why you are qualified for the role; and what relevant expertise and experience you offer. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

Our Benefits

Include but are not limited to (a) 3x employer contribution towards retirement matching your employee contribution up to 15% (b) health insurance (c) dental insurance (d) vision insurance (e) 100% reimbursement of the health care deductible through a health reimbursement account (f) short-term disability coverage (g) long term disability coverage (h) paid parental leave (i) voluntary insurances such as accident insurance (j) health care flexible spending (k) dependent care flexible spending (l) paid time off for holidays vacation personal sick bereavement and jury duty (m) office closure between December 24 Jan 1 each calendar year (n) flexible schedule and option for a compressed 4 day workweek (o) tuition and staff development reimbursement (p) pet insurance and (q) Employee Assistance Program.

Our Values

Cooperation and TeamworkForthright FeedbackInitiativeAcceptance of ResponsibilityMulticultural Sensitivity

Equal Opportunity Employer

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is dedicated to creating an inclusive work environment by hiring training promoting and carrying out personnel procedures with respect to compensation benefits transfers layoffs or terminations on the basis of individual merit experience and ability without regard to race (including traits historically associated with race such as hair texture length of hair protective hairstyles or cultural or religious headdresses) color religion national origin age sex (including pregnancy childbirth or related medical conditions) ancestry citizenship status gender identity or expression genetic information marital or domestic/civil partnership status physical or mental disability sexual orientation veteran status military service serious medical condition expunged juvenile record personal appearance family responsibilities matriculation political affiliation status as a victim credit information homelessness status reproductive health decision making or any other characteristic protected by law or otherwise.

Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about discussed or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge (b) in furtherance of an investigation proceeding hearing or action including an investigation conducted by the employer or (c) consistent with the contractors legal duty to furnish information.

Non-Smoking Organization

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a Non-Smoking organization. Smoking and the use of tobacco products are prohibited at all times and on all property owned leased or under the control of Lincoln Institute of Land Policy at all times including but not limited to indoor and outdoor grounds walkways and sidewalks parking lots company vehicles and private vehicles parked on Lincoln Institute of Land Policy property.

MA Polygraph Statement

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Required Experience:

Senior IC

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