Lead forest carbon scientist in Southampton

Full-time (hybrid/remote) Up to 3 months/year at projects in West Africa.

About Rainforest Builder: Rainforest Builder is Africa’s leading forest restoration company, on a mission to restore one million hectares of degraded land to tropical forest. We bring together world-leading science, forestry, and tech, to deliver high-quality forest restoration at unprecedented scale. Backed by some of the largest companies and investors in the world, we remove millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, restore globally threatened biodiversity, and deliver equitable economic growth to rural communities. We currently operate four projects across three countries in West Africa and are continuing to expand to new areas within the region.

Role overview: As our Lead forest carbon scientist, you will be the driving force behind our programme of carbon monitoring, providing technical oversight and ensuring that we consistently deliver high-integrity forest measurement data through highly scalable, efficiently run field operations. To date, we have measured over 150 ha of degraded tropical forests, a number set to double again over the next two years. Ensuring that we consistently apply the same high standard of implementation across a large, and growing, field operation requires an individual who cares about detail, has excellent data handling ability, and a deep knowledge of tropical forests and the realities of working in them. In this role, you will provide quality assurance for all of our carbon monitoring processes and data outputs, and lead on bringing new technologies to bear on our measurements and carbon accounting.

The ideal candidate will:

• have excellent data handling and analytical skills, with experience working with complex ecological data
• have a depth of experience in the field of tropical forest ecology, and understand how leading carbon methodologies (e.g. VM0047) account for forest carbon change
• be highly self-motivated and can operate with high agency to identify and manage problems effectively

Key Responsibilities:

• Continually assess and improve our forest carbon measurement protocols, ensuring that they keep pace with scientific developments and remain at the leading edge of measurement standards
• Oversee implementation of our measurement protocols across a large field-monitoring operation consisting of many teams spread across multiple countries.
• Own our carbon data: data management, identify and investigate data errors and inconsistencies; work with field teams to address root causes, and continually refine our processes
• Contribute to the development of tools and processing pipelines to handle and manage carbon data
• Integrate remote sensing (satellite and drone), and LiDAR into the monitoring framework.

Candidate requirements:

• PhD in a relevant field
• Proficient in R and/or Python
• Comfortable handling complex ecological datasets: identifying anomalies, tracing errors, and building reproducible analytical workflows
• Able to construct appropriate statistical models to answer questions and deliver insights, and produce clear data visualisations and data summaries as required
• Experience working in tropical forests. You do not need to be a carbon accounting specialist, but you should understand enough forest ecology sufficient to interpret monitoring data critically, and some knowledge of leading accounting methodologies is a plus.
• Experience with remote sensing datasets, drone imagery, or LiDAR in a forest monitoring or ecological research context
• Highly self-motivated, and excited by the challenge of maintaining scientific rigour across a large field operation.
• Excellent problem solver- able to identify problems and challenges as they emerge and resolve appropriately

To apply: Please email with a CV and covering letter, including the job title in the subject line. Applications via LinkedIn will not be reviewed.