Location: This is a remote position, however there may be preference for individual in a time zone that overlaps significantly with Madrid and Buenos Aires. Ability to join calls outside of normal working hours as needed.

FT/PT: Full-time

Expected start date: January 2024

Background: Global Fishing Watch is an international, non-profit organization committed to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency. We create and publicly share knowledge about human activity at sea to enable fair and sustainable use of our ocean. Founded in 2015 through a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google, Global Fishing Watch became an independent non-profit organization in June 2017. Using cutting-edge technology, we create and publicly share map visualizations, data and analysis tools to enable scientific research and drive a transformation in how we manage our ocean. Our major focus is on commercial fishing because it is the most widespread human activity at sea, the most impactful on ocean health, and the most crucial for global livelihoods and food security. By 2030, we aim to monitor and visualize the impact of ocean-going vessels, both industrial and small-scale, that are responsible for the vast majority of the global seafood catch. We believe human activity at sea should be common knowledge in order to safeguard the global ocean commons for the common good of all.

The Position

We are looking for a project manager fond of working in agile, creative and multi-cultural environments that can manage several of the Global Fishing Watch projects. All GFW projects seek to create new knowledge or combine actionable data and share it openly through our APIs and digital products making sure we make an impact solving our end users pain points. Every project will have a team with diverse backgrounds from academia, data science, software development, product, policy and more. We are looking for a project manager that, besides being responsible for planning, executing, monitoring, and ensuring the completion of the projects, helps to get the team working together and avoid unnecessary blockages in a completely distributed work environment.

GFW has grown from a small technical startup of 5 to an organization of 80+ with a research and tech team of 40. For this reason, we keep evolving the way we work to maintain the same creative and agile environment. To achieve this, we are trying out a new framework based on tech projects. Each project will have people in specific roles and one of the roles is project management. Like all the data and tools we produce, we will be iterating the framework with an agile approach.

The project manager will be working with several technical projects happening at once and supporting the periodic ceremonies of the Global Fishing Watch product and engineering teams.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Ensure that all projects that they are assigned are delivered on-time and within scope.
Support the project team in the development of project scopes and objectives, involving all relevant internal stakeholders and ensuring technical feasibility.
Create and maintain the project plan with the project team. Protect the team from over-committing and scope creep.
Ensure milestones are on track. Be the point of contact of the project to understand its status.
Organizing the different meetings needed in the project's lifecycle - planning, kick-off, checkpoints and retrospectives. Making sure that all necessary people are attending and that any materials needed for the meeting are sent beforehand. Since GFW is a completely distributed company, the project manager will also be in charge of recording and distributing the recording in case someone can’t attend and also documentation the project resources.
Make sure the project is tracked in Jira or another tool defined by the project team.
Work closely with the Data Manager to make sure each data stage requirements are fulfilled.
Support and improve the tech project framework, helping to make it work keeping it lean and agile.
Raise concerns to the CTO and the high level Global Fishing Watch technical project committee if there are any issues from the team or red flags in the project.
Work with other project managers and the high level Global Fishing Watch technical level committee to prioritize the different projects.

Other responsibilities

Organizing and facilitating other periodic ceremonies used in the development process like pre-plannings and retrospectives, making sure that everyone has the required materials before attending.
Facilitating the proposal and initiation of new projects

Candidate description

Required

3+ years experience managing agile software development teams
Ability to manage project teams of various sizes and see them through to completion
High proficiency in English
Great listener, good leadership, decision-making, and organization skills
Experience working remotely and asynchronously
An understanding of the complexities and internal communications surrounding collaboration in a global matrix and remote organization
Excellent communication skills – in person, oral, and, most importantly, written
Comfortable communicating with people from different backgrounds and roles – designers, developers, product managers, researchers, and other relevant staff members
Team player, willing to work with, teach and learn from the Global Fishing Watch team
Proactive mindset – enjoys and exhibits a high degree of ownership of tasks and projects
Comfortable working in a small but fast-growing organization
Intellectually curious, forward-thinking, willing to suggest/try new technologies and creative approaches to problems
Strong attention to detail and multi-tasking skills
Flexibility to adapt to changing processes

Preferred

Spanish, French, and/or other languages
Experience with NGO or fisheries related projects
An understanding of or passion for learning about sustainable fisheries and biodiversity
Experience with agile project estimation techniques

The successful candidate will meet most, but not necessarily all, of the criteria above. If you don’t think you check all the boxes, but believe you have unique skills that make you a great fit for the role, we want to hear from you!

Apply now

See more open positions at Global Fishing Watch

Privacy policy Cookie policy