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Biologist
WRA
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 62k-87,500 / year
Posted on Oct 4, 2025
We’re hiring an early-career Biologist to join our 10-person team on diverse projects across Northern and Central California. Our work spans infrastructure, restoration, open space, development, and renewable energy. The team combines junior and senior professionals with expertise in regulatory permitting; mitigation planning, monitoring, and reporting; special-status invertebrates; marine ecology; and botany, wetlands, and vegetation ecology.
In this role, you’ll conduct field surveys for rare and invasive plants, vegetation mapping, and wetland/stream delineations, and support office tasks such as report writing and preparing environmental permit applications. Fieldwork will take you through California’s varied ecosystems—from San Francisco Bay’s coastal salt marshes to Central Valley grasslands and vernal pools, and the Sierra foothills. We’re especially interested in candidates with some terrestrial invertebrate or pollinator ecology experience who want to learn protected pollinator surveys and habitat assessments.
We’re looking for a friendly, motivated, and adaptable biologist eager to grow their consulting career alongside experienced professionals. Expect opportunities to explore scenic places, encounter rare plants and insects, and contribute to projects that support a sustainable future.
To qualify, you should live within about 45 minutes of one of our Northern California offices (San Rafael, Petaluma, or Emeryville) for regular in-office collaboration and periodic field visits.
In this role, you will:
- Conduct site visits independently or with WRA field leads to assess and map existing conditions. These site visits could occur in rural or urban locations.
- Evaluate project sites for jurisdictional streams, wetlands, and riparian areas, as well as for special-status plant and invertebrate species' habitat.
- Collaborate with other technical staff (e.g., biologists, wetland delineators, arborists, GIS specialists) and sub-consultants (e.g., archaeologists, historians) to complete technical studies (desktop or field-based), such as land cover mapping, rare and invasive plant surveys, and/or special-status invertebrate surveys.
- Collect and analyze monitoring data to evaluate the success of restoration and mitigation projects.
- Prepare environmental permit applications and technical documents to support inter-agency consultations.
- Prepare letters, reports, and/or memoranda, with oversight and guidance from senior team members, which may include detailing results of surveys or assessments.
- Assist senior staff in the preparation of habitat mitigation monitoring plans to address the restoration of stream, wetland, riparian, and/or pollinator habitat.
- Occasionally take on assignments in support of other WRA project needs and to meet your billable hours target, such as compliance monitoring during construction, fish salvages and relocation, and other field surveys that align with your interests and skills.
To be successful in this role, you will need:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Biology, Ecology, Botany, Entomology, or other Natural Resources-related subjects.
- 1-3 years of professionally relevant experience (preferably botany or other related terrestrial ecology subject).
- Direct experience in the identification and ecology of Central/Northern California plants.
- A baseline understanding of Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) mapping.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and G-Suite (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, Calendar, etc.).
- Strong writing and analytical skills (a writing sample may be required as part of the interview process).
- The ability to walk, hike, and work outside for long periods of time, including traversing steep and physically challenging terrain in hot weather.
- The ability to conduct remote field work for up to five days at a time.
- A valid driver’s license and reliable automobile transportation (while WRA has fleet vehicles that can be reserved for field use, during busy field seasons a truck may not be available).
Additional skills and experiences that would be an asset to this role include:
- Completed 40-hour basic wetland delineation training (in U.S. Army Corps Methodology) and/or has field delineation experience.
- Experience conducting land cover and/or vegetation mapping.
- Experience conducting wetland delineations, stream and riparian mapping, and/or mapping of other aquatic resources.
- Experience conducting surveys for bees, butterflies, or other protected terrestrial invertebrates.
- Experience substantially assisting project managers or supervisors, and a desire to be mentored in managing WRA’s environmental work.
- The ability to work both independently and collaborate as part of a team.
- Attention to detail and willingness to proactively ask for guidance when needed.
- Eagerness to learn about new topics and improve skills based on feedback.
- Commitment to observing safety procedures on the job.
- Enthusiasm and appreciation for the most diverse floristic province (California) in the contiguous United States.
- An interest in learning more about California’s native terrestrial invertebrates, including bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, with a focus on protected species.
- Basic data analysis skills, such as organizing data and running simple statistical tests in Excel, R, or other programs.
- Arborist certification.
- Special-status CA wildlife experience.
- Experience with CEQA and/or environmental permitting.
WRA has an established internal leveling system for our staff that maps to salary bands which have been informed by market data. Our leveling system is dependent on years of relevant industry experience, education, and the level of responsibility and autonomy at which you’re expected to operate.
We have posted a salary range that corresponds to the appropriate level for this position. In your first conversation with our recruiter, we will discuss leveling and compensation with you to make sure that our expectations are aligned.
*The salary range for this position is $62,000-$87,500 which represents two job levels that WRA is open to considering for this role.
Who Are We?
WRA is an employee-owned environmental consultancy. We are a tenacious team of planners, engineers, and scientists who aim to leave the lands we love better than we found them.
Our clients and partners hire us because we’re skilled at navigating through challenging projects involving wildlands, parks, community spaces, and infrastructure. We bring over four decades of expertise, long-standing relationships, and connections to our local communities to ensure projects are pursued in responsible ways where both people and the environment thrive.
As an organization, we believe independence and interdependence are not mutually exclusive. We invest in systems, processes, and employee programs to support our staff’s collective engagement and success. At the same time, we encourage our employees to operate with an ownership mindset, taking responsibility for outcomes and being true to our commitments.
WRA’s company vision is to cultivate a sustainable future where people and the environment thrive, and that effort starts with our staff. We are committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment. Our team has developed flexible internal policies and practices and invests in programs that prioritize learning and sustainability. We aim to create conditions that allow employees to prioritize their families, lead healthy and balanced lives, and bring their authentic selves to work every day. We believe that by creating an exceptional workplace, our employees will be able to do their best work and meaningfully contribute to the sustainability of the environment and the communities in which we live.
WRA is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to creating a diverse environment. We recruit, employ, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status’ as required by applicable law.