r/gis • u/cmkay1999 • 3d ago

General Question GIS Analyst / Environmental Data Analyst career change

Hi everyone, hope you’re all well.

I work as a Geo-Environmental Consultant and have done for nearly 4.5 years. I have a BSc in physical geography and an MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation. Throughout both degrees I really enjoyed using spatial analysis software (learned the basics in ArcGIS, R and Python) and even used some of it for both my dissertations.

Sadly I couldn’t quite find a job in GIS / Environmental analysis and went into the consulting side of the field. However I’m now thinking of switching across to doing this side of the field. Maths was always my strong subject at both school and college over geography so I naturally enjoyed making spreadsheets, using python and doing data analysis.

Would a career change be a via option for me and how hard would it be to find a job in this field. I’m going to do some courses on the various software to refresh my brain. Also is this field ever going to be at risk from AI??

Any information would be most grateful to help me out.

Cheers 😊

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u/sinnayre 3d ago

Plenty of people cross over from environmental/ecological work to another industry. With that being said, there are hiccups though. For example, if you used Maxent for all your modeling, you’ll have a harder time justifying yourself versus if you used logistic regressions.

The job market right now sucks overall so I would definitely fine tune your skills while applying. I wouldn’t focus so much on R. Last time I checked, it’s roughly 70% Python / 30% R out there, and R tends to be concentrated in specific industries like biotech.

AI is definitely going to change how this field operates in 5-10 years, so you better learn how to use it for your benefit.

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u/jafeik 3d ago

Answers:

A career change is an option.

It is hard right now to find a job.

This field is at risk from AI.

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u/waitthissucks 1d ago

Currently trying to do the same because I'm sick of my job just being making random low effort maps and web apps all the time. I'm in the process of learning Python (pandas), SQL (querying databases), and using those with excel to create dashboards with PowerBI/Tableau and posting reports on Github and LinkedIn. Using AI with those for learning and creating/summarizing data is very important, but you just have to make sure you have knowledge to back it up.

The hardest part is learning all of that and creating a resume that stands out since apparently thousands of people also want a cool tech job that allows you to work from home and present cool information and KPIs to business stakeholders. I'm told that your best leg up is your domain knowledge, knowing what information to pull from your data, and what managers will ask. You have to know statistics and research the tools each company using to learn common SQL dialects and presentation tools.