Technical Lead

C-Quest Capital LLC (CQC) is a leading global carbon project developer, social impact investor, and climate finance specialist. Our mission is to transform the lives of families in the most vulnerable communities in developing countries by providing access to clean and sustainable energy solutions and improving the health and well-being of women and children. We do this through investing in carbon reduction and removal programs, which provide clean and efficient energy appliances, small-scale agriculture, and forestry services to vulnerable populations. We generate carbon credits from our projects and make revenue from the sale of these credits through our dedicated commercial division.

CQC’s carbon programs have improved the lives of over 20 million people in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Central America. Our ambition is to reach over 175 million people by 2035. We have successfully raised substantial funding to be able to make our ambition a reality.

CQC is headquartered in Washington DC, USA, with subsidiaries in India, Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom and operations across the globe.

Follow our journey at www.cquestcapital.com.

The Role:

CQC is hiring a Technical Lead-Methodology for its Carbon Accounting Team to support the feasibility, evaluation, design, and monitoring of our carbon reduction and removal projects across the global portfolio. The role will bring experience of the carbon project development process; validation & verification cycles and advanced technical expertise to support the development of carbon assets in clean cooking, efficient lighting, and sustainable energy. They will also help to build and grow CQC’s in-house capacity on the evaluation, planning, monitoring, and assessment of its clean cooking portfolio considering the latest methodologies, updates in standards and registries, and market assessment.

The successful candidate will report to the Head of Carbon Accounting and closely work with CQC’s carbon accounting and compliance experts on adoption of methodologies, planning and execution of GHG related assessments, monitoring, and audits at different project stages, types and locations across globe in compliance with guidelines from the leading GHG crediting programmes.

Core Tasks:

Technical evaluation & supervision:

• Ensure the highest quality of the full carbon project cycle activities, from ex-ante carbon assessments and estimations to methodological application, project document development, and supporting auditing processes for project validation and verification for credit issuance.
• Ensure projects are aligned with best practice methodologies to ensure that the carbon credits generated from our projects are science-based and aligned with industry standards.
• Ensure the timely assessment of carbon removals and/or reduction potential of new project opportunities, conduct project risks assessment and provide technical input into project development, verification/validation and implementation under various carbon and co-benefits standards (such as VCS, The Gold Standard, CCB, SD-VISta, etc.).
• Undertake planning and development of data collection tools to understand baseline scenarios and monitoring project activities in different countries.
• Provide technical review to ensure that proposed projects meet technical feasibility criteria to initiate the carbon project development and implementation cycles.
• Work closely with Operations team and Field Staff to ensure quality and reliability of data being collected, close coordination with VVBs to ensure independent MRV process, and various project stakeholders on regular basis.

Advancing CQC’s technical and scientific processes

• Contribute to enhancing the technical and scientific processes, tools, and analysis applied to CQC’s carbon project development and implementation.
• Ensure that all CQC’s departments – Carbon Accounting, Operations, Investment and Finance are up to date on the latest technical and methodological developments across a range of clean cooking/ efficient lighting methodologies and project types for clean cooking/ efficient lighting/ sustainable energy.
• Support the identification and development of applying cutting edge science, technology and digital tools to measuring and monitoring changes in a range of carbon pools.

Growth & capacity building

• Supporting the growth of the carbon accounting team in managing existing portfolios, development of future portfolios, identifying key resources and technical needs in line with latest market developments.
• Build internal expertise and capacity on a range of technical carbon skills, ecosystem modelling technologies, MRV and digital MRV, etc.
• Coordination and training with operations and field staff on data collection and assessment techniques to build capacity.

Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• PhD or Advanced degree in the field of climate or ecosystem sciences, environmental management, environmental engineering, natural resources conservation and management, climate, and carbon mitigation-related fields.
• 10+ years of extensive experience in cookstove, efficient lighting and sustainable energy projects for climate mitigation, conservation and management, or related fields.
• Hands-on experience in methodologies for carbon project development and certification in the Voluntary Carbon Market, including familiarity with carbon standards like CDM, Verra, Gold Standard, CCB, etc. in particular the development and validation of project design documents.
• Experience with a complete validation & verification cycle of improved/ electric cookstove, efficient lighting and sustainable energy projects.
• Understanding and ability to design in-field feasibility assessments and manage carbon and ecological data sets.
• Experience in proximal sensing, remote sensing, GIS tools is advantageous.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills and the ability to clearly articulate when reporting data.

Location & Travel: Preferred location to be based in India. The job will require international travel to project sites.

Compensation: Competitive salary commensurate with experience.

Supervision: Reporting to Head of Carbon Accounting Team.