Acknowledgement of Country

CSIRO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present. View our vision towards reconciliation

Child Safety

CSIRO is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all children and young people involved in our activities and programs. View our Child Safe Policy.

The Opportunity

• Apply your skills with processing and curating soil specimens
• Play an integral role within the Soil Information Team
• Join CSIRO – Australia’s National Science Agency!

The CSIRO Australian National Soil Archive (ANSA) is a nationally focused research collection of over 70,000 soil specimens. The collection primarily documents soils of Australia, but also has specimens from Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. The Soil Archive is an important component of CSIRO’s and Australia’s national soil information infrastructure, and plays a central role in documenting, understanding, and managing Australia’s soil resources. Our curated and well managed soil specimens provide a crucial resource to ongoing development of new technologies and research, through a well-managed loan process.

As the Archive Manager, you will be responsible for ensuring the smooth daily operations of the ANSA facility at Black Mountain, working closely with the Archive Assistant and the Soil Database Manager, within the Soil Information Team. You will be required to liaise with individuals, research projects and external agencies seeking to use soil specimens from the collection or seeking to submit soil specimens to the collection. There may be some requirement to travel, to represent the Australian National Soil Archive in meetings and at soil conferences. The role involves physical movement of Archive specimens, specimen processing and working at heights along with operating the electronic compactus and pallet jack. The management and curation of data is critical in this environment and may include data wrangling, data entry, literature reviews and enabling the use of Australian standard soil vocabularies.

You will undertake duties related to the archiving of the Australian National Soil Archive collection, under the direction of the Soil Information Team Leader.

Your duties will include:

• Enabling and managing user and submission requests
• Coordinating and arranging meetings of the Soil Archive Committee and of the Soil Information Team Data Review Panel
• Physical movement and manual handling of Archive soil specimens between the collection, storage, soil research staff and laboratories
• Specimen processing (including drying, grinding and sieving), bar-coding, data capture, data entry and validation
• Data curation and upload into the CSIRO soil database
• Updating and quality control of data during the post-archiving processes
• Organise and conduct tours of the ANSA facility
• Managing soil inventories for annexed storage containers
• Manage Archive resources and operational requirements
• Oversee other staff using the ANSA facility to ensure integrity of the specimen collection and adherence to safe work procedures
• Other duties as directed

Location: Canberra, ACT
Salary:  AU$89K – AU$101K pa + up to 15.4% superannuation
Tenure: Indefinite
Reference:  93849

To be considered you will need:

Please note, it is highly recommended that the Selection Criteria is specifically addressed in your application, in addition to providing a cover letter and C.V. Under CSIRO policy only those who meet all essential criteria can be appointed. 

• A bachelor's degree or higher relating to Natural History collections curation (ideally soil specimen collections) or equivalent work experience.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, be highly organised and initiative, and to seek guidance when needed to complete complex tasks
• Demonstrated experience with processing and curating soil specimens
• Demonstrated experience working with soil data and an understanding of Australian Soil description and data standards.
• Demonstrated experience with SQL, R and Microsoft office suite including Access and Excel.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver work as part of geographically distributed project teams in a way that recognises diversity of thought and capability that others have to offer.

Desirable

1. Experience with field collection and description of soil samples
2. Experience within a soil analysis laboratory
3. Experience working on nationally focused soil research and survey projects.

For full details about this role please review the Position Description

Eligibility

Applications for this position are open to Australian/New Zealand Citizens, Australian Permanent Residents. Appointment to this role is subject to provision of a national police check and may be subject to other security/medical/character requirements.

Flexible Working Arrangements

We work flexibly at CSIRO, offering a range of options for how, when and where you work. 

Diversity and Inclusion

We are working hard to recruit people representing the diversity across our society, and ensure that all our people feel supported to do their best work and feel empowered to let their ideas flourish. 

About CSIRO

At CSIRO Australia's national science agency, we solve the greatest challenges through innovative science and technology. We put the safety and wellbeing of our people above all else and earn trust everywhere because we only deal in facts. We collaborate widely and generously and deliver solutions with real impact. 

CSIRO is committed to values-based leadership to inspire performance and unlock the potential of our people.

CSIRO is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all children and young people involved in our activities and programs, whether we are undertaking research, engaging with the public or nurturing future scientists in person or online. Source – CSIRO Child Safe policy 2023

Join us and start creating tomorrow today!

How to Apply

Please apply on-line and provide a cover letter and CV that best demonstrate your motivation and ability to meet the requirements of this role.

Applications Close

22 September, 11:00pm AEST