Research Technician

Research Technician

Job Posting

Department: Research & Animal Health
Reports to: Research Scientist - Climate Resilience
Status: Hourly/non-exempt, full-time
Hours of Work: 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, typically 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., with some schedule flexibility based on project and fieldwork needs.

Position Overview

The Seattle Aquarium, a leading marine conservation organization, is seeking an early-career Research Technician interested in building hands-on experience in computer vision, image processing, and marine conservation research. This position supports all aspects of the Coastal Climate Resilience (CCR) research program, including collecting subtidal imagery using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), maintaining and expanding ROV sensors and components, processing and annotating imagery to train machine-learning algorithms, and developing open-source software for ROV operations and AI-assisted analysis.

The Research Technician will collaborate with a diverse team of internal and external partners, including Tribal, state, federal, nonprofit, and academic organizations. The role also supports relationship building and communicating research findings through scientific publications, presentations, news media, and digital channels.

Essential Functions:

This position is responsible for assisting with research including but not limited to:

• Assist in implementing the CCR research program using ROVs to conduct photo/video surveys of benthic community structure in Elliott Bay, the Salish Sea, and out along Washington’s Olympic Coast. Extensive details about the purpose of this work, the associated hardware/software, code, ROV videos, and media events can all be found at the link above in the Position Overview.
• Create and modify code using programming languages such as Python and R, along with AI-assisted coding tools such as Claude Code, to (1) conduct analyses of benthic community structure to advance our ecological research, (2) conduct analyses of the ROVs’ various telemetry logs to further our ROV methodological development, and (3) expand our usage of machine learning programs such as CoralNet-Toolbox and VIAME to help utilize these programs with imagery from kelp forests.
• Engage with Washington's highly collaborative kelp forest and sea otter conservation communities, including Tribal, state, federal, academic, and non-profit partners working in monitoring, restoration, and management. Through this work, build an understanding of the species, habitat types, and environmental variables that affect kelp forest persistence and resilience throughout Washington, including the role of sea otters as a keystone species.
• Use software such as CoralNet-Toolbox and VIAME to train machine learning algorithms to automate the extraction of community structure (percent-cover and abundance) and substrate type (percent-cover) metrics from benthic imagery. Experience with these specific programs is not necessary as on-the-job training will be provided. Candidates with software experience will be able to fine-tune and expand these programs.
• Process ROV imagery and support computer vision workflows such as object detection, including providing backup coverage for image-processing tasks when other team members are unavailable.
• Partner with survey leads (e.g., rockfish surveys) to expand and curate training datasets for machine-learning and object-detection models.
• Manage and quality-check research data, including correcting AI algorithm predictions, maintaining databases, and preparing datasets for publication and open-source release.
• Participate in public speaking opportunities to share results with diverse audiences ranging from scientific conferences to schools and Indigenous communities, both in-person and virtual.
• Act as a role model for compliance with all safety protocols, especially for field activities when using the ROV.
• Maintain cooperative and effective working relationships with others. Must be capable of maintaining strong relationships with multicultural research partners such as Tribes, federal, academic, private and community organizations.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Additional Responsibilities:

• All Aquarium staff and volunteers are expected to participate in advancing and integrating into their work Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Regenerative practices in alignment with our S.A.L.I.S.H. Values.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: The skills and abilities listed below may be demonstrated through a combination of relevant cultural and community programs, jobs, internships, volunteer experience, and/or formal or informal education. If you meet some of the requirements and you are passionate about our mission and our ocean, we encourage you to apply and look forward to learning more about you.

• Ability to write and modify code using Python and/or R.
• Familiarity with, or ability to learn, strategies to manage code repositories via GitHub (e.g., see here for an example of how we structure code on GitHub).
• Familiarity with, or ability to learn, benthic taxa of the Northeast Pacific, particularly kelp and algae species, and colonial/aggregated taxa such as sponges, tunicates, hydroids, bryozoans; and individually conspicuous species such as sea stars, sea urchins, anemones, and demersal and midwater fishes.
• Familiarity with, or ability to learn, aspects of electronics relevant to robotics and the maintenance of ROVs such as soldering connectors onto cables to incorporate new sensors into the ROV.
• Familiarity with Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, OneDrive), virtual meeting platforms (e.g., Zoom, Teams).
• Must possess organizational skills, be self-motivated and self-directed. Able to seek guidance when needed. Must be comfortable with problem-solving challenging situations.
• The CCR program has a small but close-knit team; a successful candidate will have strong interpersonal, collaboration, and team-building skills.

Experience, education and certifications: We will consider various combinations of relevant experience and education in order to meet minimum requirements.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work and research experience in natural resource management, biology, marine biology, environmental sciences, conservation, computer science, quantitative science, or related fields.
• Demonstrated collaborative research experience at academic, state, federal, Tribal, or non-profit institutions, including undergraduate research, internships, or volunteer work.
• Experience with software development preferred but not required.
• Robotics experience preferred but not required.
• Coursework or experience in computer vision, image processing, or object detection preferred but not required.
• Background in marine science or biology preferred but not required.

Working Conditions:

Salary and benefits: $27.50–$29 per hour. Dependent on experience. Please include salary expectations in your application materials. Full-time staff are eligible for the Seattle Aquarium’s comprehensive benefits package to include medical, vision, dental, an employer-funded health reimbursement account, medical and dependent care flexible spending accounts, life insurance, long-term disability, 403b retirement fund with employer match, access to a subsidized ORCA pass, a Seattle Aquarium Family Plus membership and generous paid time off.