Environmental Science Associates (ESA) is a 100% employee-owned environmental consulting firm. We plan, design, permit, mitigate, and restore for projects across our communities, infrastructure systems, open spaces, and wildlands. We are 50 years strong in 21 offices across California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southeastern United States.

Environmental Science Associates (ESA) seeks an early-career Groundwater Program Analyst with 2-7 years of experience in groundwater management and water resources to join our Technology Services team. The successful candidate is ideally located in the Sacramento area, but we are open to candidates located near another ESA California hub. This is a hybrid position that supports conducting most work from a flexible location of your choosing.

ESA’s delivery teams have typically meet in person a few times a month and often choose to work together in ESA’s office a few days a week. We are therefore seeking candidates located in proximity to Sacramento or near another ESA California office. Travel to client locations across California may be required up to a few times per month.

Who You Are

You are an early-career water resources professional with either a Master’s degree in water resources, hydrology, environmental science or management, environmental policy, or a related field, or 2-7 years of experience working in groundwater management in CA — who wants to help groundwater agencies put sustainable management into practice on the ground. You bring solid foundation in understanding groundwater management and California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), including concepts such as groundwater allocations, demand management, sustainable yield, and reporting and compliance. You are curious about how policy decisions become the rules that agencies and growers actually operate under.

You are comfortable working with data. You are proficient with spreadsheets and have an aptitude for data QA/QC and systems thinking, and you have experience with geospatial tools such as QGIS or ArcGIS and parcel or other spatial data. Familiarity with SQL or scripting languages such as Python is a plus.

You are tech-savvy and eager to learn new tools and platforms quickly. You are a natural communicator and relationship builder. You can explain technical concepts about water resources clearly to non-technical audiences — growers, agency staff, advisory committees, and Boards — and you are comfortable providing support and helping to facilitate meetings, workshops, and trainings for diverse audiences.

You proactively identify issues, contribute constructively to problem-solving, and advocate for client needs within an interdisciplinary project team. You hold a master’s or bachelor’s degree in a water resources related field and are able to pass a federal and/or state background check for project-based assignments. Coursework or a certification in GIS is a plus.

What You Will Do

for ESA As a Groundwater Program Analyst, you will help groundwater agencies operate transparent, trustworthy water accounting programs on ESA’s Groundwater Accounting Platform (GAP). Working alongside our project managers, water resources specialists, and software developers, you will help turn groundwater policy into working systems that agencies and growers can understand, trust, and rely on. Configure groundwater management programs within GAP under direction — establishing geographies, zones and management areas, water accounts, and water measurement types such as evapotranspiration, precipitation, and metered extraction.

Assemble, integrate, and perform QA/QC on the data behind groundwater accounting, including third-party meter and telemetry data, OpenET evapotranspiration data, self-reported extraction, allocation records, and parcel spatial data. Prepare and process parcel and spatial data for parcel-level accounting using GIS tools.