Geospatial systems lead - Rainforest Builder

About Rainforest Builder

Rainforest Builder is Africa’s leading forest restoration company, on a mission to restore one million hectares of degraded land to tropical forest. We bring together world-leading science, forestry, and tech to deliver high-quality forest restoration at unprecedented scale. Backed by some of the largest companies and investors in the world, we remove millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, restore globally threatened biodiversity, and deliver equitable economic growth to rural communities. We currently operate four projects across three countries in West Africa and are continuing to expand to new areas within the region.

Why this role exists

The quality of reforestation and carbon credits is as strong as the quality of data and insights. The integrity of our spatial data underpins the integrity of every credit we issue. As we scale beyond ten thousand hectares under management toward tens of thousands, the central bottleneck is no longer surveying capacity in the field; it is the rigour and reliability of how that data is captured, validated, and managed centrally.

We have a dispersed field operation across West Africa with surveyors and drone pilots collecting cadastral and remote sensing data daily. They are hardworking and capable, but the layer they cannot provide is centralised data management: identifying anomalies, tracing root causes, building reproducible workflows, and continuously tightening processes. That is the gap this role fills.

The role

As Spatial Data Lead, you will own the integrity of Rainforest Builder’s spatial data end-to-end. You will sit at the centre of a dispersed operation, providing the technical oversight and data discipline that turns raw surveying and drone output into trustworthy representations of every hectare we manage. You will lead a growing planning and surveying function across our projects, embedding the rigour needed to scale tenfold.

This is a data-management-first role with a spatial domain. We are deliberately not looking for a traditional GIS specialist. We are looking for a strong data manager and operational leader who is fluent in spatial data and comfortable with the messy realities of cadastral surveying in a Global South context.

What you will do

• Own our spatial data and the processes that generate it, ensuring high-fidelity representations of all areas under management
• Lead and continuously improve our cadastral surveying operation across large, complex, and often contested areas in West Africa
• Identify, investigate, and resolve data errors and inconsistencies; work with field teams to address root causes; build reproducible analytical workflows
• Contribute to the development of internal tools and processing pipelines for managing spatial and drone data at scale
• Build and develop the Planning teams across all our projects, raising the bar on data discipline across a dispersed workforce

Requirements

Who we’re looking for

Essentials:

• Strong data management instincts — you treat data quality as a discipline, not a checkbox, and you can demonstrate experience tracing errors back to their source in messy operational datasets
• Proficient in R and/or Python, with a track record of building reproducible analytical workflows
• Comfortable working with large geospatial datasets and drone imagery; able to spot anomalies and trace and fix errors
• Experience leading or coordinating dispersed field teams — ideally in a Global South or operationally complex context
• Highly self-motivated, with high agency to identify and resolve problems independently

Strongly preferred:

• Experience of cadastral surveying, particularly in a Global South context, and familiarity with the challenges of establishing high-fidelity boundaries on the ground
• Experience with remote sensing datasets
• Background in forestry, conservation, land restoration, agritech, or another sector with significant ground-truthed spatial operations

Not required:

• A pure GIS or cartography background. We have hired strong GIS specialists before and found that data-management discipline matters more for this role than GIS depth.

Logistics:

• Location: flexible. UK or Europe is our bias, but we are open to candidates based in West or Southern Africa, or elsewhere, provided they are willing to travel.
• Travel: up to roughly 2–3 months per year at projects in West Africa.
• Working pattern: hybrid or remote.
• Compensation: competitive salary plus benefits, calibrated to location and experience.