Head of Carbon

🌳  Working Trees gets farmers paid for growing trees. This is possible thanks to our phone application, which rips the cost out of carbon project verification. Our goal is to democratize access to carbon markets for farms of any size.

Trees on agricultural land (a practice called agroforestry) is among the largest climate solutions we have, typically sized on-par with rooftop solar (see IPCC and Project Drawdown).

We have launched the first agroforestry carbon project in the US, raised >1.5m of non-dillutive funding, and partnered with organizations such as Stanford, The Nature Conservancy, The Organic Valley Cooperative, Cisco, and Virginia Tech to advance agroforestry adoption. 

We are seeking an experienced carbon quantification lead to join our small team to ensure we continue generating only the highest quality credits. This will involve improving our carbon sampling routine, refining our existing quantification approach, and conducting field experiments to evaluate the accuracy of the mobile phone sensing tool in different contexts. 

We seek individuals who are deeply passionate about using their skills to addressing the climate crisis. This is an opportunity to play a foundational technical role at an early stage and growing climate tech startup and make a significant positive contribution toward addressing climate change.

Responsibilities for Head of Carbon

1. 🖱️ Carbon Math - In the near-term: develop sampling approach, uncertainty quantification, and accuracy assessments for mobile phone-based biomass estimation technology
2. 📱 Scientific Testing and Field Trials - Conduct field validation of mobile phone sensor to estimate woody biomass across a variety of different environments (agroforestry, afforestation/reforestation, improved forest management)
3. 💻 Carbon Project Management - Own the creation and publication of carbon quantification approach to be used in our own projects and to support monitoring of external projects. In the near-term: lead our validation. Longer-term: lead all our validation and verification processes. 
4. 👟 General startup duties - Interface with product team, science team, and engineering team to ensure that all quantification best practices are embedded into workflows. Work with partners to ensure best practices are carried through to their operations. 
5. 🟨 [Bonus] Remote Sensing - Work with satellite, airborne, and drone-based data to extract information related to carbon, biomass, landcover type, etc. 
6. 👀 [Bonus] Data Science and Software Development -  Contribute to the development of the Working Trees MRV platform through software development, including developing and implementing new algorithms, image processing pipelines, and computer vision workflows.

Qualifications for Head of Carbon

- STRONG mission alignment
- Hands-on experience working in carbon methodologies (e.g. Verra, Plan Vivo, Gold Standard), including development of project description documents, sampling routines, uncertainty quantification, and running validation/verification processes.
- Experience designing and executing field data collection campaigns.
- ~5 or more years of experience preferred
- Interest in climate tech, agriculture, forestry, energy
- Experience publishing peer-reviewed research studies preferred
- Quick learner, comfortable with fast paced environment and previous startup experience