Science Lead

About Cascade

Join Cascade Climate, a global nonprofit accelerating progress in climate interventions that leverage Earth’s natural systems—from soils to oceans to glaciers—to stabilize our climate. We work across industry, government, and science to help remove the biggest bottlenecks that are inhibiting progress with the most promising natural-system climate interventions. Cascade is philanthropically backed and since its launch in 2023 has built a strong funding base with anchor support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Grantham Foundation, Quadrature Climate Foundation, and others.

For the fields we choose to tackle, Cascade acts as a field-building hub: coordinating ambitious cross-sector initiatives, creating new tools and infrastructure that accelerate the community’s work on promising solutions, and resourcing critical R&D and policy work. Our approach starts with building deep, trust-based relationships across the entire ecosystem in any given field. Philosophically, we put learning at the heart of our work, embracing uncertainty rather than wishing it away, and helping natural system climate intervention fields shift into virtuous cycles of learning-by-doing. We help chart the evidence-driven course needed to identify interventions that can be deployed safely, effectively, and responsibly at scale.

Cascade’s initial focus has been advancing the development of Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) as a promising climate-smart agriculture and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solution, underpinned by its scientific evidence base and its potential for gigaton-scale, durable CDR. This year, we are expanding our work to help accelerate progress within the broader family of geochemical CDR pathways to which ERW belongs. 

About the Role 

As Science Lead, you will shape and orchestrate Cascade’s science work across our growing programmatic portfolio in Enhanced Rock Weathering and geochemical CDR more broadly. This is a compelling opportunity for someone who is excited about a platform that goes well beyond research-oriented scientific leadership roles. 

Your role will span thought leadership, partnership building, program management, and developing people. Intellectually, you will spearhead our strategic thinking about the evolution of Cascade’s science work, contribute to groundbreaking scientific initiatives, and be a leading public voice on geochemical CDR science. You will captain some of our key scientific workstreams and be the primary relationship manager for some of our most important external relationships in the scientific community. Internally, we will look to you to help build and develop a team of Cascade scientists working on geochemical CDR, investing a significant portion of your time in coaching and mentorship.

We are looking for an experienced geochemist with deep carbon cycle expertise—ideally across terrestrial and marine ecosystems—and wide-ranging scientific curiosity. We are open to candidates from a range of backgrounds, and are particularly excited to find people with a mix of experience inside and outside academia. 

• Developing and stewarding Cascade’s portfolio of science work in geochemical CDR; leading team thinking to formulate a coherent vision for our role and priorities in R&D acceleration
• Directing a subset of high-priority workstreams while empowering and supporting other members of the team leading on other worksteams
• Contributing as a public thought leader by shaping Cascade’s intellectual agenda, authoring influential publications, representing Cascade at conferences, serving on high-level working groups, and more
• Building and managing trust-based relationships with senior scientists at partner NGOs, universities, and commercial project developers
• Coaching and mentoring—and in some cases directly managing—members of the Cascade science team
• Serving as a frequent thought partner and resource on key scientific questions to colleagues across the Cascade team—brainstorming, reviewing and giving feedback on documents, etc.
• Helping with various aspects of organizational development including hiring, fundraising, building internal systems, and more 

• PhD in (bio)geochemistry, geosciences, or related fields 
• Broad and deep scientific command with issues and systems relevant to geochemical CDR, including but not limited to: organic and inorganic carbon cycling in soils, groundwater, surface water, and/or marine settings; expertise in low temperature (bio)geochemistry; strong Earth system scale thinking; comfort and intuition working across the land-sea continuum; experience designing and deriving learnings from field studies
• Uncommonly strong reputation as a scientific thinker 
• Eager and effective coach and mentor to earlier-career team members
• Experience managing people and teams within and across disciplines and career stages
• Excellent active listening and relationship-building skills with a history of productive collaborations
• Confident dynamism as a speaker and conversation shaper with the courage to respectfully challenge others’ thinking
• Track record of independently and effectively managing highly complex projects
• Demonstrated ability to move quickly and be decisive even in the context of ambiguity and uncertainty
• Ability to oscillate between the big and small picture: always sweating the details conscientiously yet able to zoom out, facilitate creative team problem-solving on strategy, and help everyone see the forest for the trees

• You palpably demonstrate empathy and humility on a day-to-day basis, with a sense of awe for our small place in the world’s large ecosystem
• You are able to embrace tension and ‘inhabit’ both sides or perspectives on an issue, demonstrating an ability to work under situations with uncertainty and ambiguity
• You have contagious curiosity and strong self-driven learning habits, with clear evidence of this hungry auto-didacticism in your past education and work experience. 
• You set high standards and expectations of yourself while avoiding letting “perfect get in the way of really good” so that you can deliver strong work quickly 

Location

Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to one of Cascade’s hubs. Cascade is headquartered in Boston and has hubs in Washington D.C., New York City, and the Bay Area. We are a hybrid workplace, in-office a couple days a week out of a shared co-working space or our Boston headquarters. 

We love seeing each other in person. We gather regularly for team time like retreats, learning experiences, and whiteboarding sessions. Be ready to travel at least once per month—and occasionally a bit more as needed—for conferences, team gatherings, and partner meetings.

Diversity     

At Cascade, our mission is to dramatically accelerate progress across a range of open-system climate interventions in order to ensure a healthy, livable Earth for all humanity. Recruiting, hiring, mentoring, and retaining a diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve is critical to our success.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. Cascade is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Work Authorization: Please note that Cascade Climate is unable to sponsor H-1B work visas for this role. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for H-1B visa sponsorship at the time of application.