Head of Carbon Solutions

Living Carbon is a public benefit corporation with a mission to responsibly rebalance the planet’s carbon cycle using the inherent power of plants. We believe that gigaton scale CO2 drawdown will only happen if solutions are both beneficial to the environment and profitable to landowners. We’ve developed photosynthesis-enhanced seedlings that capture carbon faster on underperforming and degraded land. In addition to improving carbon capture rates we are also working on extending the durability of nature based sequestration. We’re backed by some of the most prominent investors in Silicon Valley including Felicis Ventures, YCombinator, and Chris Sacca of LowerCarbon Capital.

If you believe that climate change is the defining global emergency of the century and want to join an ambitious project that’s working on a biological solution, we’d love to hear from you.

Your role:

Living Carbon is using biotechnology and microbial treatments to develop high-quality, scalable, forest carbon projects on new types of underperforming land using our own seedling supply and planting partners. The resulting carbon credits are a solution that offers higher additionality, transparency, and co-benefits than many other nature-based solutions but without the high price point of engineered carbon removal. We are looking for a creative, mission-driven leader to bring these carbon credits to more buyers and carve out Living Carbon’s presence in the voluntary carbon markets. 

Up until now, developing corporate carbon solutions has been driven by the CEO; as we grow that needs to change. We are looking for a senior level hire with experience either creating carbon credit portfolios for companies or working as a corporate sustainability leader. The primary objectives of this role are to increase our carbon credit procurement pipeline, develop a repeatable playbook of how to design and execute multi-year offtake agreements, and build strong relationships with a large portfolio of customers and marketplaces. The ideal candidate is a self-starter who is excited about the role of plant biotechnology and innovation in the nature-based carbon removal space and willing to take full ownership of the Living Carbon corporate carbon outreach, process and contract negotiations. This would involve developing new, data-driven approaches to identifying and reaching customers, refining and clearly communicating the narrative of our solutions, and working closely with the rest of our commercial team to shape our product. This role will report directly to our Head of Commercial.

Your responsibilities:

• Identify and build a large pipeline of potential customers and align their net-zero / carbon credit purchase targets with our project development timelines
• Develop relationships with enterprises purchasing carbon credits across a variety of industries
• Attend events and conferences to create visibility for Living Carbon’s brand narrative and facilitate inbound interest
• Develop a repeatable playbook for executing on multi year offtake agreements to reach our carbon credit goals in tandem with the carbon project development team
• Develop pitch and positioning for our project portfolio
• Take ownership of Living Carbon’s carbon credit sales strategy and communicate clearly to answer questions about our product, science, impact, and other FAQs about our trees
• Become an expert on trends in the voluntary carbon markets; form and test hypotheses about where the market is headed and how we can shape our product to respond to buyers’ needs
• Synthesize and share feedback from outreach initiatives back to the internal team
• Manage pipeline with CRM software (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, etc.)
• Work collaboratively in a remote role with other members of the Living Carbon commercialization, R&D and operations teams

Requirements and qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience working in carbon or energy markets
• The ideal candidate could have been working at a consulting company to help companies evaluate and select their portfolio of credits or working on sustainability at a corporate level, having previous experience procuring carbon credits or executing on decarbonization strategies
• Experience working with or selling into energy companies and a variety of hard to abate industries
• Strong existing network with carbon buyers and corporate sustainability leads
• Experience developing target lists, prospecting new leads, qualifying, developing proposals, negotiating and closing transactions
• Experience in applying to RFPs
• Excellent writing and verbal communication skills
• Familiar with carbon markets, carbon offset standards and protocols and forest carbon projects
• Eagerness to work in a fast-moving organization and comfortable with uncertainties that come along with building a company in a quickly evolving market
• Strategic creative thinker and entrepreneurial mindset, interested in building new business models
• Would be described as “willing to do what it takes to get the job done”
• Comfortable making decisions based on imperfect data
• Empathetic to the problems others face, a good listener, and a team player
• Easily able to think creatively and critically and take the shortest path to executing on a project or to solve a given issue
• Able to cognitively switch between different types of projects with low stress
• Autonomous self-organizer who can balance and organize your schedule and day to maximize productivity

Living Carbon PBC offers competitive compensation, and generous healthcare, dental and vision insurance.

Living Carbon PBC is an equal opportunity employer.

We believe the best solutions to climate change are created by diverse teams. Living Carbon is focused on building a multicultural and inclusive team with strong representation from the many diverse communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. As a public benefit corporation, ensuring solutions to slow climate change are widely distributed to all peoples is critical to the success of our mission.