Senior Carbon Scientist

About the role

Anthesis Group's Carbon Development Unit, co-led from South Africa and the Netherlands, develops, verifies and transacts carbon credits across agriculture, renewable energy, household energy, waste and nature-based solutions. As Senior Carbon Scientist in Cape Town, you will carry out and quality-assure the soil carbon science and modelling behind the carbon farming programmes and broader nature-based projects, supporting the models, sampling design and statistics and keeping a transparent evidence trail for verification audits. You will also help manage changes in the VCS Standard and its methodologies, and report to the Principal Carbon Specialist – Nature-based Solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the research needed to run, calibrate and re-validate the Roth-C soil organic carbon model, draft validation reports and respond to reviewer and auditor comments
• Validate model performance against measured soil data and align outcomes to uncertainty deductions, and contribute to soil sampling design and the sampling protocol
• Track Verra's revisions to the VCS Standard and VM0042, assess their impact on projects, update project descriptions and monitoring plans, and prepare deviation, revision and methodology clarification requests
• Build the quantitative basis for baseline scenarios, including soil carbon stock assessments and baseline trajectories, and support the additionality case and project area delineation
• Draft the technical quantification sections of project descriptions and monitoring reports, and support feasibility work and expansion into new geographies and crops
• Define data requirements for digital MRV platforms, build reproducible analysis pipelines in R or Python, and quality-assure farm activity data
• Assemble evidence packs for validation and verification, respond to corrective and clarification requests, and coordinate independent model evaluations

Required profile

• Master's degree in a quantitative environmental discipline (quantitative ecology, biogeochemistry, agronomy, soil science or similar); a PhD is welcome
• At least four years of post-qualification experience in soil carbon, greenhouse gas quantification or quantitative environmental research
• Right to live and work in South Africa
• Advantageous: direct VM0042 experience, exposure to other nature-based solutions or carbon standards, familiarity with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, peer-reviewed publications, science communication experience, experience with African or Latin American farming systems, and Afrikaans, Portuguese or Spanish

Required skills

• Hands-on experience with a process-based soil carbon model such as Roth-C, DNDC or DayCent
• Working knowledge of the VCS Programme and at least one agricultural, forestry or land-use methodology
• Applied statistics and fluency in R or Python
• GIS and remote sensing skills (e.g. Google Earth Engine, QGIS) are advantageous

What we offer

• Flexible working hours and a hybrid model of up to 2-3 days from home per week
• Monthly medical allowance
• Collaborative, international team and professional development opportunities