Ask HN: As SDEs, how do you find new projects to do on your team?

I have recently joined a team of scientists where my job is to help them do their work efficiently. There's a lot of inefficiencies in what they do, but also a ton of external dependency. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around everything and struggling to understand what projects/solutions to come up with to solve their long term problems. Should I start with automating small redundant tasks? I fear that I will miss out the bigger picture that way. Do I be patient and let the ideas come to me naturally? I feel like the other SDEs on the team already have sort of "taken" the "big" obvious projects. I'm worried that I'll be unable to have my own impactful project and will be left doing small tasks.