Senior Technical Manager - Species and Sites

Application deadline: Saturday 28 November, 23.59 Pacific / Fiji Time
Location: Fiji

Full-time: 37.5 hours per week
Contract: Three year fixed term contract

Salary: FJ$90,000 per annum, plus 10% pension
Annual Leave: 25 days pro rata in year 1 increasing by 1 day p/a to 28 days

BirdLife International is the only global Partnership conserving birds and all life on our planet, uniting 125 civil society organisations across 120 countries. We exist to give one voice to nature, and to unite and strengthen conservation across borders.

BirdLife has a decentralised Global Team across 11 regional offices including Suva Fiji, for the Pacific. The Pacific has more threatened bird species per unit of land area, or per person, than any other region in the world and is home to around a quarter of the world’s globally threatened bird species.

We are looking for a Senior Technical Manager – Species and Sites, to work as part of the Global Team from the Pacific office. In this role, you will shape how the Pacific protects its most important places and threatened species. You will provide strategic and technical leadership and project management capability for the Species and Sites pillars of the BirdLife Strategy, making sure that site identification, monitoring and data meet global scientific standards and provide a strong evidence base for Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), Protected Areas and Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs). You will also coordinate the recovery of threatened species by developing Recovery and Action Plans, providing technical support to partners, and leading threatened species status reviews. Your work will help turn rigorous science into real conservation outcomes across the region.

How you will do this:

Lead the Pacific’s work on Key Biodiversity Areas:

• Develop and lead the Pacific KBA strategy, acting as the region’s technical lead and Regional Focal Point (Australasia and Oceania) for the global KBA Programme, so sites are identified, delineated and managed to the Global KBA Standard.

• Provide ornithological expertise to underpin trigger species, population thresholds and site assessments.

• Help Partners and governments use KBA and species data as the evidence base for Protected Areas and OECMs, and for site prioritisation toward global targets such as the Kunming-Montreal Framework and 30x30.

Drive recovery of the Pacific’s threatened bird species:

• Identify priority Pacific species and guide conservation action based on need, feasibility and potential for recovery.

• Support the development and delivery of Species Recovery and Action Plans.

• Coordinate the Pacific’s contribution to the conservation status of birds in the region.

Build the evidence base:

• Design and oversee monitoring and data collection for priority species and sites, ensuring high-quality data reaches global databases (e.g. the World Database on KBAs and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List).

• Contribute a Pacific analysis to flagship reports such as State of the World’s Birds and State of Conservation in Oceania.

Grow people and partnerships:

• Design and deliver training in bird monitoring, survey methods and data management, mentor Partner technical staff, and strengthen KBA National Coordinating Groups.

• Represent BirdLife in regional and international forums (e.g. KBA Partnership, IUCN, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), The Pacific Islands Round Table for Nature Conservation (PIRT)) and build links with the wider scientific community.

Shape strategy and delivery:

• Lead the Pacific Implementation Plan of the BirdLife 2022 – 2030 Global Strategy, including impact reporting against the regional plan.

• Connect species and sites work with the Island Restoration and Marine programmes.

• Provide technical input to proposals for large-scale, multi-site conservation projects.

What we are looking for:

• A conservation scientist with a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in ecology, conservation biology or a related field, and 10 years’ of applied experience.

• A good understanding of modern conservation paradigms, including community-based conservation.

• Proven experience managing conservation projects.

• Experience in conservation, development and political issues in the Pacific (or other island nations).

• Demonstrated knowledge of the KBA standard, protected areas science and OECM frameworks.

• Knowledge of existing and upcoming species conservation planning tools (e.g. Red List assessments, Species Action and Recovery Plans).

• Proven ability to build and maintain effective partnerships, facilitating collaboration across governments, NGOs, local communities, technical experts and other stakeholders.

• Demonstrated experience in field data collection, data analysis (e.g. population survey data, KBA data) and site/species conservation assessment.

• Experience designing and delivering species and site technical training and capacity building to a range of stakeholders (e.g. government, practitioners, communities).

• Awareness of the social, cultural, and governance contexts influencing conservation in the Pacific and/or developing countries.

See the full job description here.

Some of our benefits:

• We are able to offer a hybrid model of working on-site and from home/remote for most roles, which helps to ensure a flexible work-life balance.

• A generous pension scheme.

• Private medical insurance.

• Full access to LinkedIn Learning with access to more than 13,000 high-quality, on-demand courses.

• Employee Assistance Programme, including access to Health Assured online health portal.

BirdLife values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. Find out more about our Diversity statement.

We are committed to building and maintaining an inclusive and supportive culture, a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We aim to promote a more inclusive environment, which attracts all candidates and signals our commitment to celebrate and promote diversity.

We know that everyone’s needs are different. If you need us to make any adjustments to our recruitment process, let us know, we’ll do our best to make it happen.

Interviews: Interviews will be held from 10 December 2026.