Volunteer and Career Opportunities

We are seeking an experienced software engineer to help build and maintain WildePod, our cloud-based platform for processing wilderness camera imagery used in animal population research. Identifying humans, mountain lions, bobcats, and other animals captured by motion-detection cameras is central to our ecosystem research and conservation efforts. The cameras generate large quantities of images, and our software automates the otherwise time-consuming work of sorting them and filtering false positives.

This is primarily a software engineering role: building backend services in Django, working with our PostgreSQL database and image pipelines, and developing the tooling our researchers rely on. Part of the work involves integrating machine learning models (MegaDetector, SpeciesNet) to recognize animal species. We're looking for a strong engineer who's comfortable working with ML as one tool among many. Experience with cloud infrastructure (especially Google Cloud) is a plus.

If you enjoy hiking and are interested in wildlife this is a great volunteer opportunity for you! The Bay Area Puma Project maintains a large-scale and long-term network of wildlife cameras in the San Francisco Bay Area and Orange County since 2023! We are looking for volunteers to help us maintain these cameras used to monitor wildlife. This involves hiking to a camera trap in a protected area every 4 weeks to collect and exchange the SD card and batteries. Volunteers will receive training in the field before visiting a camera station on their own.  Previous experience with ecological data collection is a plus but not required.

Note: You must have your own transportation as cameras are not accessible by public transport. You must also have a reliable internet connection in order to upload camera trap images to our Cloud-based database every 4 weeks.

Felidae Conservation Fund is seeking volunteers to assist with cataloguing images of wildlife from our large-scale camera trap network from across California. This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in wildlife, nature to put their species ID skills to the test for science!

This volunteer position is fully remote. Cataloguing images is done using our Cloud-based software, thus a reliable internet connection is needed. We require a minimum 6 month commitment, and at least 1- 2 hours per week.

An interest in wildlife is required along with attention to detail as these images are the basis of our datasets that are used in scientific research to assess the impacts of human and habitat-related factors affecting wildlife activity.

Felidae Conservation Fund, a 501(c)3 non-profit based in the San Francisco Bay Area is seeking volunteers to assist with creating content for our social media accounts (@felidaefund). We share educational information about wild cats and their conservation every day as well as share media from our camera trap network. In addition, we create graphics through Canva to share information about wild felids in California and beyond! We are active on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, BlueSky and Tiktok and would love to have your help! This is a fully remote position, requiring a commitment of at least 6 months for 1-2 hours per week.

We are seeking an experienced graphic designer who is interested in putting their skills towards the conservation of wild cats! If you have experience creating graphics, making infographics, and coming up with new ideas for our outreach materials, we’d love to have your help! This would involve producing text, graphics and images to provide information for educational materials,design content, and printed pieces. Let us know which software you use in your work and include some sample work so we can see if you are a good fit. This work is done on an as-needed basis and is a fully remote opportunity.

We are seeking enthusiastic volunteers who are interested in helping educate the public about wild cat conservation! This role involves representing Felidae Conservation Fund at outreach events throughout the Bay Area, sharing information about mountain lions, bobcats, and our conservation work with members of the public. Volunteers help engage visitors, answer questions, and encourage conversations at informational tables alongside other team members.

Most events take place around Earth Day and during the fall season at locations such as CuriOdyssey, Safari West, Lawrence Hall of Science, and other community venues. No prior outreach experience is required—we provide event-specific information and guidance to ensure you feel prepared and comfortable. Opportunities are offered on an as-needed basis, and volunteers are notified by email several weeks in advance with event details so they can decide whether they are available to participate.

We are in need of a volunteer who is an experienced fundraiser to assist with cleaning up our donor database, organizing lists,  and sourcing new donors, family foundations, and grants. This requires doing targeted searches in donor software. iWave system experience preferred.

The ideal volunteer is an excellent writer, organized, with some knowledge of wildlife issues, research and non profits, as well as the ability to curate lists and sort for funding and support at multiple monetary levels.

Please reach out if you have these skills and want to help us with our lists and funder searches.

Felidae Conservation Fund is seeking a dedicated and detail-oriented volunteer to provide office and administrative support. This role is in-person, in the Bay Area, and requires a minimum commitment of six months or longer to ensure continuity and support for our operations. Responsibilities include office and administrative tasks, organizing and record-keeping, CRM data entry and management, email correspondence, scheduling, and assisting with annual filings and compliance documentation. The ideal candidate is organized, reliable, and able to work independently, with strong communication skills and familiarity with office software or CRM systems preferred. This is an excellent opportunity to gain hands-on experience in nonprofit administration while contributing to meaningful wildlife conservation efforts.

We are seeking a content manager who has strong experience with a content management system in general and preferably experience with Joomla.

Weekly updates to two websites, with weekly minimum commitment of 1-3 hours.

We request a minimum of 6 months commitment and prefer long term interest. If you have interest in wildlife conservation we want you on our team!

Please note: Knowledge of Joomla is required!

We are seeking volunteers interested in helping to communicate wildlife conservation and research to a broader audience through writing. This role involves researching and writing in-depth articles about wild cats and related conservation topics for publication on our website and in our newsletter. Example topics include How Bobcats Protect Us from Zoonoses and How Bay Area Fog Carries Mercury to Pumas, as well as other topics related to wildlife ecology, conservation, and research.

Volunteers are generally asked to write approximately one article per month. We typically provide article topics, but we also welcome ideas and suggestions from writers with relevant interests and expertise. If you are interested in this opportunity, please submit a few writing samples so we can evaluate your writing style and determine whether the role is a good fit.

We are seeking a volunteer who is experienced with GIS to produce maps for research and outreach purposes using data from our large scale camera trap network and our Bay Area Puma Project Sightings Map (https://bapp.org/meet-puma/sightings). Maps are used to help visualize spatiotemporal trends in wild felid detections, sightings, as well as our sampling locations relative to habitat and human footprint layers. In addition to producing maps, we may ask the volunteer to extract spatial data to use in statistical analyses.

The GIS volunteer should have experience making clean and professional looking maps in ArcGIS/Map, QGIS, or R that includes various land cover layers. Interested volunteers should send 1-2 recent samples of maps they have made. This work is done on an as-needed basis. The volunteer can expect to make 1-2 maps each month.