OpenTEAM Project Manager (Agricultural Data Infrastructure)

About Wolfe's Neck Center

Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment is a fast-growing, national nonprofit organization based on a campus of over 600 acres of coastal farmland in Freeport, Maine. Our work is dedicated to creating a world where agriculture and food systems support farmer viability, thriving ecosystems, and vibrant communities. Through regenerative farmer training, demonstration, innovative research, and collaborations, Wolfe’s Neck Center works to advance agriculture - on our own campus and nationally - to accelerate holistic change in food systems, and mitigate the effects of a changing climate.

As a part of our mission, WNC supports the OpenTEAM initiative (Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management). OpenTEAM is a community of farmers, ranchers, businesses and developers working to increase food system resiliency in the face of climate change. By acting as a convener, technology steward, and facilitator, OpenTEAM equips food system leaders with shared knowledge, collaborative frameworks, and open-source, connected technologies to build climate change resilience and thriving communities.

Role Impact Area: Agricultural Data Infrastructure

OpenTEAM is currently hiring for two project management roles that will hold similar types of responsibilities and will both work on our Collaborative Projects team. The main difference between these two roles has to do with the impact areas of projects falling under each role’s purview.

The OpenTEAM Projects Manager focused on farmer-driven data stewardship will be primarily responsible for managing projects related to how farmers will utilize and benefit from data-driven technologies in a trusted way.

The OpenTEAM Projects Manager focused on Ag Data Infrastructure will be primarily responsible for managing projects building backend, modular tooling that could be utilized by developers building farmer-facing tools. 

Please apply by submitting a resume and cover letter for the impact area that best aligns with your interests.

About The Role

OpenTEAM is expanding its role as a convener and facilitator, and has a series of upcoming projects related to building out backend, reusable components and developer tooling for agricultural data.  Our vision is to collaborate across a community of stakeholders and experts to deliver the business, legal, and technical components needed to create FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) agricultural data, utilities, libraries, and methodologies. These efforts will support a more data-driven and climate-benefiting agricultural sector, improve models and data management systems, and ultimately lead to functional and secure data collection and use for farmers. Through these collaborative efforts, we will advance knowledge-sharing, increase access to sustained price premiums for farmers, create verifiable sustainability goals for buyers, and contribute climate & environmental benefits for the planet. 

In support of our goals, our community of partners has spent years working toward interoperable data conventions, architectures, and FAIR specification. This position will be a main point of contact for our partners working on backend, highly-technical workstreams, with a focus on bringing those project outputs toward our community and the broader agricultural sector.  This Project Manager will oversee the scoping, development, documentation, and maintenance of critical data components needed to achieve our community vision.  They may also be responsible for executing and reporting against grant-specific timelines and deliverables, as well as managing internal team members who are contributing to projects within their scope.

Requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required to perform this job successfully. If you do not fit this description perfectly but believe that you would be a good fit for this position, please do not hesitate to reach out with questions or apply. Reasonable accommodations may be made to individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

• Executing on activities that support the co-visioning and development of backend data utilities to support an interoperable technology ecosystem. Activities could include partnership management, project management for community collaboration or development stages, and facilitating co-design processes.
• Ensure that the activities and milestones for our highly technical projects are clearly defined and shareable throughout our community. 
• Develop timelines that are coordinated with other relevant and additive OpenTEAM workstreams. This will include facilitating the use and reuse of technical specifications for cross-organizational projects.
• Setting up and maintaining project tracking in management softwares, including Gitlab and Asana. 
• Support communications efforts for a more public-facing audience interested in understanding how our technical work contributes to the overall vision of the OpenTEAM community.
• Facilitating collaborative approaches to scoping and developing FAIR data utilities toward our community vision. 
• Supporting grant reporting and budgetary oversight.

• Relevant experience in project management. Preferred experience managing and reporting on grant-funded projects
• Interest and excitement about data management and modeling, human-centered design processes, agricultural technology, and agricultural research methods or data collection
• Experience managing technical partners and project scopes, with an emphasis on development outputs
• Experience working toward a shared vision with diverse teams of tech developers, scientists, and nonprofit leaders
• Comfort with communicating complex technical or agricultural processes to diverse and non-technical audiences
• Demonstrated passion for food systems change
• Comfort with ambiguity and change in a quickly growing organization
• Ability to work collaboratively as a member of a growing team and develop effective working relationships with people from a variety of backgrounds 
• Preferred: People management / team leadership experience 
• Preferred: Experience coordinating and / or facilitating cross-organization collaborations 

• Legally able to work in the United States (we cannot provide VISA sponsorship)
• This position can be done remotely. Hybrid may be an option at our oceanfront campus in Freeport, Maine.

Benefits

The OpenTEAM Project Manager (Agricultural Data Infrastructure) is a full-time, year-round position. This position may be done remotely, but hybrid may be an option at Wolfe’s Neck Center in Freeport, ME. As a full-time employee of Wolfe’s Neck Center, this position is eligible for benefits including health insurance, dental insurance, three weeks paid vacation and six sick days, Maine state holidays off, and our retirement savings plan which includes up to 100% match of employee contributions up to 5% of eligible compensation. If on-site, the employee will be eligible for a ½ CSA share from the Center. Compensation commensurate with experience: $70,000 - 80,000.

To Apply

Please apply at the button below by submitting a cover letter and resume. Applications received by April 14th will be given priority.

Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment welcomes a diverse pool of candidates. In accordance with federal Equal Opportunity laws, Wolfe’s Neck Center does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, sexual orientation including gender identity or expression, veteran status, or physical or mental disability in the hiring of its employees. Applicants are selected based on their ability to perform the essential functions of the job, prior work experience, and references from previous employers.