Geographer

GISP-certified geospatial professional leveraging RTK surveying, drones, satellites, and cloud compute to deliver value within AEC (architecture, engineering, construction), agriculture, and conservation.

🏠 Identified capacity for 170,000 homes on public lands near San Francisco Bay Area transit hubs.
☀️ Discovered multiple sites for utility-scale solar projects for Intersect Power (acquired by Google).
✈️ Contributed to the development of Esri’s drone mapping platform Site Scan and earned my Part 107 in the process.
🦐 Researched environmental monitoring with satellites and deep learning, then applied the approach to enhance seafood certification programs established by the World Wildlife Fund.
🌾 For Cargill (the largest private US company): Scaled up with AWS resources and developed country-scale agricultural insights for sustainable sourcing (deforestation-free palm oil) and commodities trading.

Resume

Zack Dinh

Full Stack Geographer | GISP Certified | FAA Part 107

Education

Master of Landscape Architecture (Environmental Planning), University of California, Berkeley

Climate adaptation through restoration and integration of natural systems within urban environments. Portfolio
Thesis: Environmental monitoring with satellite imagery and deep learning. Presentation
- Located and assessed all fish farming activity in Greece (6,600 fish farming cages).

BA Urban Studies & Planning, San Francisco State University

Assessed campus bicycle infrastructure and completed cross-campus bikeway for facilities department.
Ocean Avenue Historic Preservation Resource Guide for the SF Office of Economic & Workforce Development. Guide

Experience

Advanced Spade | Solutions Engineer | Signal Hill, CA | May 2025 - March 2026

Utilities: developed GNSS/RTK app and hardware; trained field team to map underground utilities; produced design-ready CAD packages containing site topography and drone imagery with Civil 3D.

Cargill | Senior Geospatial Analyst | Remote | Jan 2023 - Feb 2025

Commodities: developed remote sensing pipelines with Python, AWS, QGIS to generate country-level insights for sustainable sourcing (deforestation-free palm oil) and commodities trading.

Sea Warden | Founder | Los Angeles, CA | June 2020 - Oct 2022

Conservation: awarded $155k to leverage satellite monitoring to scale seafood certification programs established by the World Wildlife Fund.

Intersect Power | Geospatial Analyst | San Francisco, CA | May 2018 - May 2019

Energy: identified sites for utility-scale solar with ArcGIS Pro, suitability analysis, and purchased data.

CD+A | Urban Designer & Geospatial Analyst | Oakland, CA | June 2015 - May 2017

Urban design: prepared existing conditions GIS data for transit oriented development projects.
Urban planning: analyzed 2 million parcels for nine-county Bay Area housing capacity inventory.

Additional Experience

Instructor | UC Berkeley

InLand: invited to teach landscape architecture summer course (Jun - Aug 2025).
Geography Department: graduate student instructor; 60 students in 3 sections (Jan - May 2020).

Land Surveyor | Denn Engineers (Mar - May 2025)

Utilized survey equipment and AutoCAD to certify a dozen construction projects a week.

UAS internships

UC Berkeley (Jan - Dec 2019): 20 wetland surveys (1,000 acres, 10-month campaign, Pix4D).
3D Robotics (2017), Hivemapper (2019), Near Space Labs (2022).

Urban Planning

SF Municipal Trasnportation Agency: Urban Planning Initatives Group (2014-2015).
SPUR: Transportation Policy Intern (2014).

Prototyping

3D printing, SketchUp, Teensy microcontroller, Sparkfun/u-blox hardware (ZED-F9P, ZED-X20P).

PUBLICATIONS

A Review of Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle Use in Wetland Applications
Drones, MDPI | May 25, 2021

Sea Warden:
A Remote Sensing-enabled Decision Support System for the Sustainable Management of Marine Aquaculture in the Greek Sea Space
University of California, Berkeley | May 1, 2020

Geomorphic and Hydraulic Controls on Coho Salmon Outmigration in the Russian River Watershed, California
University of California, Berkeley | Nov 23, 2019

Viable Public Lands For Workforce Housing
Metropolitan Transportation Commission | Aug 7, 2018