Hej Manish,

since nobody has answered in two weeks ( unless you got DMs) , you may wonder what is going on? Frankly, I don't know for sure, but here is my guess since I've tried something similar, coming from database development ( for economic history ) into nature conservation. In actual nature conservation, there is interest in database development, but most is done by scientists and conservationists themselves.  There is very little grant money available for the activity per sé, is my understanding. Wel, there is very little money for nature conservation, period.

As you know, in climate change combating it is a different story because there is an comparatively huge amount of financial interest in certain areas ( like alternative energy sources, fossil fuel free alternatives ) where investors hope to get a serious return on their investment. So, I am not surprised that you found a job there. If you need an income, I would stay there - maybe not at the same company if you don't like it there, but in the same field.

Somewhere in between is something called 'nature tech'. Maybe you're already familiar with that. I'm still getting my head around that myself, but this is driven by upcoming (EU - if there was something boiling in the USA, that has stopped or recalled now I assume) rules and regulations regarding sustainability and biodiversity that corporations (will) need to report on and take action on. The problem for corporations ( and policy makers )  is that it is incredibly difficult to develop simple and meaningful indicators. There seem to be plenty of startups and investors willing to take risks and innovate. It all has a lot to do with big data sets, covering large areas of the world if not the entire world. You may find some of these companies here on WILDLABS, but 'nature tech' has its own on-line hangouts (like nature4climate.or and naturetechcollective.org ). It's a bit confusing because there is technology and discussion overlap between nature conservation tech ( which you'll find here ) and parts of nature tech.

Lastly, there is the area of nature based solutions, which tries to put a concrete economic value on products and services that nature provides for people. Clean water and carbon sequestration are typical examples. This too is a world where, compared to nature conservation, lots of money is around and available, and where I would assume that data scientists may find work for example in monitoring, reporting and verification.

There is a lot of shooting from the hips in my answer, but I hope it helps, and at least triggers some more responses.

PS As group curator, and because I notice that my answer turned out to talk a lot about funding and financen, I would appreciate it if you could ad the Funding and Finance group to your post ( you can still do that by clicking the Edit button that is available to you). That may also give your question a bit more exposure 

Hi Manish,

There are other related posts here on WILDLABS with some potentially interesting answers, e. g. this post. Perhaps you might find some useful information there in case you haven't seen it already. Volunteering in that area might also be an interesting entry point.

Cheers,

Alex