Climate Mitigation Data Engineer

As a Climate Mitigation Data Engineer at Open Earth Foundation, you build the data cities use to plan, act on and track their climate goals. That starts with greenhouse-gas inventories cities can trust, and runs through estimating what each action could cut, to monitoring progress and reporting it.

Cities need to know where their emissions come from, report them to frameworks such as the GHG Protocol for Cities (GPC) and CDP, and track progress over time. You own that mitigation record: the methods, the inputs, and the models behind the numbers.

A Data Platform Engineer owns the shared warehouse and the pipeline platform. You decide whether a calculation is right, which dataset it should use, and where the gaps are. Together you put that domain on a platform other Digital Service applications can use. Colleagues on the data team cover climate risk and adaptation. This role is focused on mitigation.

This is a mid-level role. You ship datasets and reviewed methods with your manager. You are not expected to design the warehouse architecture.

Essential Functions and Specific Duties:

• Design and maintain the data models for emissions inventories, activity data, emission factors, sources, and methodologies
• Build and run pipelines that ingest national, global, and city-provided datasets into those models, with tests, versioning, and clear lineage
• Review technical methodologies for emissions calculations: check the logic, data inputs, assumptions, and global-warming-potential choices, and flag gaps
• Encode reporting rules so outputs align with the GPC and with other frameworks cities submit to, including CDP where relevant
• Snapshot factors and methods onto results so a historical inventory stays reproducible when a catalogue changes later
• Set data-quality checks and compare results against independent sources
• Document data models, pipelines, and methods so partners and colleagues can follow how every number was produced
• Work with the Systems Data Engineer so domain models land in the shared warehouse as contracts, not as a private schema
• Support cities and partners with emissions profiles and with questions about where a number came from
• Use AI tools for dataset discovery, cleaning, documentation, and method review, and check the output before it is used

Other:

• Actively participate in team building and culture development activities at Open Earth Foundation

Qualifications:

• 5+ years in data engineering or a closely related role
• Strong Python and SQL
• Working knowledge of greenhouse-gas accounting frameworks, such as the GHG Protocol for Cities (GPC) or IPCC methods
• Solid understanding of relational databases and schema design (for example PostgreSQL)
• Experience with at least one pipeline or orchestration tool (for example dbt, Airflow, Dagster, Mage, or similar)
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and data warehouses (for example BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, or PostgreSQL used as an analytical store)

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience building or reviewing city or national emissions inventories
• Emission-factor catalogues, notation keys (IE, NE, NO, C), and data-quality tiers
• Familiarity with GPC sectors, scopes, and BASIC / BASIC+ reporting levels
• CDP, Common Reporting Format, or eCRF reporting
• Geospatial data and tools (PostGIS, GeoPandas) for allocating activity data to cities
• Hands-on use of AI tools or LLMs in data workflows
• A MSc or PhD in Environmental Science, Climate Science, Environmental Engineering, Data Science, or a related field is highly desirable, particularly with research experience in greenhouse-gas accounting, emissions modeling, or climate data systems.

Interpersonal Skills:

• Explains technical methods in plain language to non-technical colleagues, cities, and partners
• Works well with external partners such as research institutions and climate networks, including C40, the Global Covenant of Mayors, and CDP
• Collaborates closely with the Systems Data Engineer, and with full-stack, AI, design, and product teams, helping shape how emissions data shows up in products
• Comfortable saying when a number is not ready to publish, and what would make it ready

Other Qualities

• Dedication to fighting climate change
• Focus on impact over process
• Interest in non-profit work

Benefits:

• Open Earth offers unlimited paid time off, paid holidays and paid sick leave
• You will work remotely within a dynamic and international environment
• We celebrate our achievements during our annual team retreat