Overview

Location: Puerto Morelos, Mexico
Department: Operations
Employment Type: Full-Time
Minimum Experience: Experienced
Type of role: Permanent (minimum 1-year contract)
Start date: July 2022
Speciality: Research, analyse and evaluate marine ecosystem data focused on longitudinal studies of fish, coral and invertebrates

About you

You are passionate about tackling marine conservation issues and believe that how we measure and understand the environmental impact is critical to ensuring the protection and preservation of our planet.

You are a self-starter who rolls up your sleeves to get things done and enjoys tackling a wide variety of tasks as part of your day-to-day. You are looking for an opportunity that will allow you to engage, and build relationships, with like-minded people from all over the globe.

What you will do and how you will grow

GVI develops and leads long-term conservation approaches and programs, to build local capacity, provide high-quality data on marine trends, and restore coastal habitats. Our Mexico “hub” (field station) is located in the town of Puerto Morelos, situated on a stretch of the Caribbean coastline known as the Riviera Maya. Puerto Morelos is the oldest town on the Mexican Caribbean coast.  You will work with other local partners focused on coral reefs, marine protected areas, and monitoring critically important species.

The goal of the Marine Science Manager is to deliver ethical and impactful coastal and marine programs and manage the hub’s research and impact reporting. The role reports to the hub’s Program Manager and is supported by GVI’s global Conservation Impact Director. You will engage with our participants, ensure the hub has robust data collection and reporting systems in place, liaise with university lecturers/professors around the hub’s research agenda, and write reports to communicate project results.

Responsibilities

  • Lead and support field staff, volunteers and interns to deliver fieldwork and project activities successfully
  • Serve as a role model by demonstrating a strong work ethic and respect for different perspectives and cultures
  • Day-to-day liaising with local partners to build and maintain relationships, ensuring projects are locally-led and have a maximum positive impact
  • Write up project concept documents and impact frameworks that outline project goals, short and long-term outcomes, expected outputs, proposed activities and required resources
  • Analyse collected field data from surveys by statistic analysis and determine outliers and  evaluate methods
  • Engage with local partners and universities with the aim of developing research proposals and writing collaborative scientific articles
  • Develop and improve monitoring strategies and oversee the daily impact and research data collection
  • Deliver participant training workshops and oversee participants’ participation in project work and/or research supervision
  • Conduct project evaluations and write up local impact reports including results and lessons learnt for each project
  • Develop content that champions local voices and thought pieces on important conservation issues and drive fundraising initiatives for local partners
  • Provide information and data relating to research, impact and ethics to Marketing, Sales and Impact teams in Central Support
  • Attend and present at marine symposiums in Mexico.
  • Own overall impact of the hub

GVI is a platform for personal growth and transformation. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not only valued at GVI, they are essential to our organisation’s success. In addition to providing training and mentorship, we empower our teams to learn by doing and get involved in small, ad hoc teams that often involve people from across the business.

Qualifications

  • Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Marine Science. Relevant experience will be considered in place of a degree.
  • PADI AOW and Rescue (Divemaster preferred) with survey dive experience
    (Dive Instructor advantageous). SSI or CMAS will also be considered.
  • Completed a minimum of 50 dives.
  • First aid qualifications are also advantageous

Competencies

  • Excellent English communication skills (oral and written) and excellent Spanish communication skills
  • Conducting ecological surveys focused on coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems.
  • Highly competent in data analysis and graphing in R, Python, or other programming languages
  • Ability to work with large data sets and produce scientific documents across diverse marine disciplines. Evidence of scientific scholarship (e.g. peer-reviewed publications)
  • Organised and able to set up systems for managing data, processes and information

Desired experience

  • Knowledge of the Caribbean coastline/marine environment in Mexico
  • Conservation work at remote field sites in different regions
  • Working with national government agencies, NGOs, small scale fishing communities, marine scientists and academics, working with students or volunteers advantageous
  • Managing research programs and developing marine monitoring protocols
  • Impact management, or monitoring and evaluation
  • Training others or teaching and communicating technical information to non-technical audiences

The successful applicant must comply with GVI’s COVID-19 Mandatory Vaccination Policy and Employment Code of Conduct.

What we offer

Package includes:

  • Monthly salary
  • Accommodation
  • Food
  • Visa costs (if applicable)
  • Emergency medical and travel insurance

In addition, GVI has the following perks:

  • Training fund
  • Social allowance
  • Leadership development
  • In-house counselling support
  • Growth opportunities across our 17 locations!

About us

We are a multi-award-winning social enterprise on a mission to build a global network of people united by their passion to make a difference. We run all our own sustainable development programs in 13 countries worldwide aligned to the objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

To ensure we are truly having a lasting positive impact, we partner with local governmental and non-governmental organisations on the ground. More than 35,000 participants have either volunteered, interned, or studied abroad with us over the course of our 21 years in operation, and most have noted the experience as ‘life-changing.’

You can find out more about the types of work we do, and who we are as an organization here.

To apply

Please submit to recruitment@gviworld.com with the subject line: Application for Marine Science Manager – Mexico, a CV/Resume and a cover letter that provides responses to the following questions:

  • What drew you to this role, and which part are you most excited about?
  • Tell us about what marine research topics you are experienced or interested in?
  • What do you think are a few key challenges and opportunities related to strengthening marine conservation in Mexico?

Please note: We will do our utmost to respond to all applicants, however, given the large volume of applications we receive, this isn’t always possible. If you do not hear back from us within three-four weeks, please take it that on this occasion your application was unsuccessful.