Carbon Partnerships Lead

Role: Carbon Partnerships Lead

Reporting to: Founder & CEO 

Environment: London - Hybrid +Some Travel (E.g, conferences, client visits, offsites)

Package: Up to GBP 100k (depending on experience) for London based role + Options. 25 days bank hols, statutory pension, home setup allowance.

Other: We cannot sponsor visas at this time

Please apply even if you do not see yourself meeting every criterion on this job spec. We want to build an inclusive, thriving team that represents the world we want to build and live in. We are led by our Founder/CEO who is a Woman of Colour and deeply values equity and inclusion.

Opna’s Vision

Imagine a thriving, equitable planet where everyone actively participates and benefits from building projects that contribute to a low-carbon economy, safeguarding our environment, and combating climate change. At Opna, we want to make this vision a reality - by unlocking the needed capital for every high-quality climate project that addresses climate change with speed, scale, and equity.

Urgent Challenge

We stand at a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change. We must rapidly undo the centuries-long impact of fossil fuels. This demands an unprecedented infrastructure revolution - we must rapidly scale high-quality climate projects that remove and reduce carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. High-quality carbon removal projects, from afforestation to biochar, to newer/frontier technologies encounter formidable barriers in accessing necessary financing - that’s where Opna comes in. We’re combining data, financing innovation, and technology to help high-quality climate projects access right timed, right sized financing, anywhere in the world.

Our Solution

Opna acts as trusted carbon asset manager; combining software and expertise to support climate-action-committed companies to source and then forward finance the highest quality and impactful carbon projects in a standardised, transparent, and cost effective way.

The world’s leading climate-action committed companies are moving away from simply buying carbon credits, and looking to directly forward finance projects which not only meet their carbon net zero goals, but also have significant and measurable impact. Thousands of other companies, big and small must follow suit, but simply do not have the inhouse resources, expertise, or large budgets to contract with projects in a cost-effective, transparent, and knowledgeable way.

Opna’s software allows companies to discover a wide range of high-quality carbon projects, understand their risk and impact using Opna’s proprietary impact and risk-assessment framework, financing only selective projects using standardised tools and finally, monitor and report on projects’ post financing.

We’re making carbon projects more accessible, cheaper and 100% transparent, enabling companies big and small to take credible climate action. This also helps solve the massive project financing gap and brings net-new high impact supply of high quality carbon projects to the market.

Our Team

We are HQ’ed in London but also have team members in Berlin and Barcelona. Collectively we have deep experience and expertise across capital markets, carbon markets, startups climate finance, and FinTech. We hold each other accountable and give regular and open communication. We share our optimism for finding solutions to climate change. We’re gritty and actively practise empathy. We are serious about our work, but don’t take ourselves too seriously!

Your Mission

Opna is looking for an experienced and ambitious Supplier Partnerships lead for Carbon Removal. Your mission is to make Opna the trusted and preferred,  go-to advisor and partner for the selected carbon projects we work with. In this role, you are responsible for originating, growing and implementing successful partnerships with carbon removal projects around the globe, with a particular focus on the global south.

Your Role

In this role, you will be an independent and expert individual contributor. You will be the go-to person for originating, nurturing, onboarding, contracting with and managing our portfolio of carbon projects. In addition to your direct partnership responsibilities and working with our Head of Science and Carbon Solutions Lead, you will closely work with our CEO, our Head of Product and our GTM/growth function to build on insights from project developers and the market for our strategy and product. This is a business development and partnerships building role, grounded in strong understanding of the Carbon removal market and above all, building trusted, long term relationships with the folks who are doing the real, impactful work on the ground, i.e. our project development partners.  

Responsibilities

• Own the origination, onboarding and success of carbon removal project partnerships
• You will be responsible for sourcing, closing and maintaining project partnerships/deals end-to-end, including sourcing, screening, business development, onboarding projects to our platform, partnership contract structuring and negotiation, and our project partners’ success.
• You will ensure that the partnerships are deeply aligned with our clients' (corporates and financial institutions’) preferences for project quality, deliverability and outcomes.
• You will work with our sales tools and our CRM to build insights and capture feedback in order to improve our processes and product.
• You will be the voice of our project development partners as we make company, product and project decisions.
• You will create campaigns and initiatives to keep nurturing our community of existing and prospective project development partners.
• You will evaluate partnerships, where sensible, to create better/efficient ways of supporting project development partners.
• You will be highly responsive to prospective and current partners on carbon removal eligibility advice and inquiries. Ensuring advice is commercially relevant, informed, aligned internally, pragmatic, transparent, and well-written.
• You will get highly comfortable with our product and platform and be comfortable running Demos and onboarding sessions, independently of the team
• You will represent Opna at various developer oriented events and forums
• Help build the internal know-how, thought leadership and collateral to best support our project development partners 
• In carbon markets, in particular carbon removal, many of our project development partners need a high level of initial support, be it with information on projects,standards, LCAs, pricing, market trends, projects due diligence, contracts and legal and deal structuring-
• Support our scientific and risk teams in developing Due diligence and risk modelling frameworks across methodologies 
• Leverage your market and supplier knowledge to provide inputs for Opna’s Due Diligence and risk-framework work - both from a knowledge perspective and how we productise this knowledge.

We think the person below will thrive here…

• You want to dedicate your skills and experience to solving climate challenges - We are an early stage company building in a nascent market. Without the alignment with our mission, You will likely find the going hard, and the learning curve steep.
• You really enjoy learning and building strong, long-lasting relationships - Carbon markets and in particular carbon removal are evolving at a strong pace, and it's important that you want to keep pace with that evolution and want to build deep relationships with our project development and ecosystem partners.
• You want to, and are comfortable working in an early stage environment, where your role may stretch beyond the responsibilities of this role and  your day-to-day will involve rapid changes and associated chaos. 
• You are comfortable working with technology/CRMs/Biz-dev tools, but are also able to learn, discover and implement new processes, as they become relevant 

Experience Needed

• Experience in carbon markets and in particular, with carbon removal technologies in the nature base and engineered carbon space
• Strong understanding and network in the carbon removal ecosystem - project developers, industry players, standards, methodologies etc.   
• Previous success in business development, sales, community building or partnerships functions
• Strongly preferred; extensive experience of working with nature based projects in the global south

Character

• Belief that climate change is the number one problem to solve
• Extreme sense of ownership and urgency to get stuff done, to a high standard.
• Thrives on clear communication and expectation setting 
• Thrives with high accountability, high visibility, and high-impact career
• Confident in their ability to proactively collaborate and be autonomous
• Resilient, hard working, and robust to changing environments. Will roll their sleeves up and fight the fires when needed
• Loves the scrappiness that’s the hallmark of early-stage startups while holding high the importance of rigour and robustness in delivering quality solutions for clients.
• Curious, open to differing opinions, and enjoy sharing your knowledge and perspective.

Interview Process

• Screening with Opna Chief of Staff Matt
• Video call with our CEO, Shilpika Gautam
• Carbon Markets Case Study (onsite in London, preferably) + Meet the Team
• References
• Final offer

We know that diversity is multifaceted and intersectional, and we want to build a company where different identities and perspectives can come together to deliver on our mission and vision. We are a venture-backed company founded and led by a woman of colour. 50% our team today has their roots in the global south, and a majority of our investors identify as women. We speak English, Hindi, Spanish and French across our team.

Package: Up to GBP 100k (depending on experience) for London based role + Options. 25 days bank hols, statutory pension, home setup allowance.