About iNaturalist

Protecting nature starts with noticing it. On iNaturalist, millions of people around the world share photos and audio recordings of the plants, animals, fungi, and more near them. After more than 18 years of noticing nature, the community has created one of the world’s largest open biodiversity databases — one that has informed over 7,000 scientific papers, supported on-the-ground conservation efforts, and connected people to the nature around them. 

iNaturalist is an independent nonprofit with a mission to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation. We believe anyone, anywhere can contribute — you don’t need to be an expert to make a difference — and that community science is critical to protecting global biodiversity. Our small, dedicated team builds technology to scale community science, with humans in the loop. 

We’re growing, and we’re looking for people who want to help millions more around the world turn their everyday curiosity into lasting impact for nature! 

Position Summary

iNaturalist's moderator and curator community is a globally distributed network of volunteers who help keep the iNaturalist ecosystem healthy, trustworthy, and scientifically valuable. iNaturalist's moderators and curators have delegated authority to make specific decisions about content and taxonomy (like changing species names — this can be very controversial!). This new role is about making these systems more consistent and scalable. Success in this role means evolving iNaturalist's moderation and curation systems to become increasingly community-supported so that volunteers can handle more of the day-to-day needs as participation grows.

Moderation on iNaturalist generally refers to how people interact with other people and how the community applies its shared norms, guidelines, and policies. Moderation takes place on both the bespoke iNaturalist platform (website and mobile apps) as well as the iNat Forum (which uses the Discourse platform). Volunteers have the tools and authority to handle many cases of platform misuse. Most moderation challenges on iNaturalist involve well-intentioned people whose actions are inconsistent with community expectations, rather than malicious actors. As a result, moderation often focuses on education, conflict resolution, and the consistent application of community guidelines. More serious abuses do occur that require timely and sometimes legally required responses (such as harmful or illegal content and coordinated abuse), but they represent a relatively small portion of the moderation workload.

Curation on iNaturalist generally refers to how information and data structures related to species (or taxa, more generally) change. 

These two distinct types of content management (moderation and curation) are carried out by several hundred volunteer “curators” who can help steward both the community and the information systems that power iNaturalist. This community is knowledgeable and deeply committed — but it lacks decision support frameworks and training to operate consistently and confidently. 

For both moderation and curation, improving and scaling this work depends on governance: the systems that help volunteers exercise their delegated authority consistently, fairly, and transparently. There are two areas of governance development needed:

• Decision support: the criteria, documentation, and training that help a moderator or curator reach a clear, defensible decision in a given case. 

• Structure around those decisions: how volunteers come into these roles, how they're supported and held to shared standards, and how their decisions can be reviewed and appealed. 

The Senior Manager of Community Moderation & Curation exists to build this governance. Working in collaboration with the Director of Community Support, this new role will take the lead on community governance, moderation, and curation systems, develop the decision-making resources and training that help volunteers do their work well, and help shape how iNaturalist evolves curation and moderation work over time.

Key Responsibilities

Community Governance, Capacity, & Systems Development

• Help iNaturalist anticipate and address community governance challenges at scale, including the development of increasingly scalable approaches as participation grows.

• Build structured onboarding, training, and support pathways for new and existing curators and moderators — much of which does not exist today.

• Develop scalable systems for recruiting, onboarding, supporting, and retaining curators and moderators, helping the community sustain and renew its own capacity over time while reducing reliance on staff intervention as participation grows.

• Establish communication infrastructure and regular feedback loops between staff and the curator and moderator communities.

Community Moderation

• Monitor and respond to incoming moderation tickets (e.g., via Freshdesk), serving as a primary point of escalation for urgent and complex cases, especially during the initial transition of this responsibility from the Director of Community Support, with the goal of building systems that make this work more scalable and increasingly community-supported over time.

• Develop clear, consistent policies, guidelines, and documentation that help moderators make sound, defensible moderation decisions (e.g., when and how to hide content, apply suspensions, and handle edge cases).

• Expand protocols for sensitive situations that require escalation to staff, legal counsel, or reporting obligations.

• Support and strengthen the iNaturalist Forum moderation team, serving as their primary staff point of contact and helping forum governance remain scalable, consistent, and increasingly community-led as participation grows.

Curator Community Support

• Serve as the primary staff point of contact for the curator community, supporting their questions, identifying recurring challenges, and translating those insights into improvements to policies, governance systems, documentation, and product requirements.

• Develop and maintain decision-making frameworks and resources for the bounded operational decisions curators make — for example, when to split a taxon, when to open or obscure geoprivacy to protect a species — reducing both decision paralysis and inconsistent application.

• Maintain and evolve the Curator Guide and related documentation.

Measurement & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track a core set of metrics for community capacity, consistency, responsiveness, and reliance on staff intervention.

• Identify gaps and opportunities in community systems and propose policy, governance, product improvements, or documentation proactively.

• Evaluate how governance responsibilities are distributed between volunteers, staff, and product systems, and help evolve those systems as iNaturalist grows.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to identify opportunities where governance, moderation, onboarding, or curator-support challenges can be addressed through scalable product improvements.

Required Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and a minimum of five years of relevant professional experience or Associate’s degree with a minimum of seven years of relevant experience required.  

• A scalable, systems-oriented approach: energized by creating order, structure, and clarity in complex human interactions.

• Demonstrated experience in community management, governance development, content moderation, volunteer leadership, or closely related fields.

• Experience developing policies, frameworks, or structures that help groups make clear decisions and apply policies consistently.

• Sound judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes, or emotionally charged situations where existing policy doesn't give a clear answer.

• Comfort making unpopular but fair decisions, and the resilience to maintain them in the face of pushback, without becoming either defensive or conflict-avoidant.

• Genuine interest in and familiarity with nature or similar mission-driven communities built around volunteer participation and shared stewardship.

• Awareness of how bias and group dynamics shape community decisions, and experience designing processes that promote fairness.

• Highly perceptive to tone, context, and stakes to identify what is driving a conflict.

• Clear, precise writing for: documentation and guidance that others can act on without you present, de-escalating charged exchanges, and communicating difficult or unwelcome decisions firmly, fairly, and with care.

• Composure and resilience when encountering rare but serious or disturbing content (e.g., nudity, harassment, scams).

• Ability to communicate clearly to colleagues in English in writing (internal communication tools and docs) and speaking in meetings.

• Ability and willingness to travel 1-3 times per year (e.g., annual staff retreat, which may be international).

• Eligible to work in the United States (see eligibility note below).

Preferred Experience and Qualifications

• Experience with distributed, peer-production, or online volunteer communities (e.g., Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap, Zooniverse, citizen science or community science, or similar ecosystems).

• Familiarity with iNaturalist as an active user.

• Some working understanding of biological taxonomy and how taxonomic communities operate.

• Experience supporting online communities through moderation, governance, or policy implementation.

• Experience streamlining or retiring processes or systems that no longer work well (not only creating new ones).

• Familiarity with support and community platforms such as Freshdesk, Discourse, or similar tools.

• Experience working with people across diverse cultures and languages.

• Written fluency in another language commonly used in the iNaturalist community (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Dutch, Chinese).

What this role is not

• It’s not designing governance for iNaturalist's organizational strategy or direction — it shapes how day-to-day moderation and curation decisions are made, reviewed, and improved by volunteers, as part of iNaturalist's mission to connect people to nature and advance science & conservation.

• It’s not managing other staff — only volunteers. 

• It’s not about making taxonomic decisions — it’s about developing the governance for the community to make those decisions. 

Why It's Great to Work at iNaturalist

A mission that matters. With species going extinct daily, the need to protect and document biodiversity has never been greater. iNaturalist has become the go-to data source for most species.

A great team. We value and celebrate unique perspectives and contributions. We are committed to collaborating, supporting, learning from, and learning about each other.

Flexible work. We are a virtual team, and this position's work can be performed from home or wherever you are comfortable with a strong internet connection. You'll even get some funds to set up your office and a monthly stipend to defray some of the costs.

For this position, to facilitate collaboration across time zones, we require that you be a resident of and eligible to work in the lower 48 states (i.e., not Alaska or Hawaii).

Competitive pay. The starting compensation for this position is $118,811.27 per year, non-negotiable.

Great benefits. We offer a robust benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, plus an employer-funded health reimbursement account and employee-funded flexible spending accounts. There is a 401k plan with a 5% match and an employee assistance plan. This position is eligible for unlimited personal time off — and unlike some tech companies, we really mean it: everyone is expected to take a minimum of three weeks a year off.

Additional Information

Because this role involves access to sensitive information, a background investigation is required prior to employment for applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment. Applicants given a conditional offer will be required to sign authorization and release forms enabling such an investigation.

Application Process

Instead of a cover letter, we will ask you to answer a few questions that will be reviewed (by real people, not AI) and assessed separately from each other, your resume, and your name. Randomization and anonymization of each element in the initial review process allows us to focus on the content of your answers, which minimizes bias.

Applied asks for your demographic information, but we never see it in association with you — only summarized in aggregate. We use it to assess the overall demographics of the candidate pool.

The application will close no later than noon PDT on July 8, 2026. We may close it early after receiving 150 completed applications. In this case, we will notify anyone who has started the application that they have 48 hours to complete it.

After initial review of applications on a rolling basis, advancing candidates will be asked to answer a few more questions before candidates are selected for interviews. 

Timeline Summary (may change slightly):

• Application: Due by July 8 (latest)

• Written follow-up: due July 12 (latest)

• Interviews: July 13-17

• Offer: late July

• Ideal start date: late August

Research shows that members of marginalized groups may not apply for jobs unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage anyone who would be excited to do this work every day to apply.

iNaturalist is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other applicable characteristics protected by law.

iNaturalist is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities during the hiring process. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in the application or interview process, please contact Director of Finance & HR Adrienne Pettit at adrienne@inaturalist.org.