Carbon Solutions Lead

Role: Carbon Solutions Lead

Reporting to: Founder & CEO

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

Package: Up to GBP 100,000 p/annum (depending on experience) + Options. 25 days hol+ bank hols, stat pension, home setup allowance. Open to contract or contract to perm set-up.

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 offers a software platform for climate-action-committed companies to finance and manage high-quality 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, to directly financing carbon projects. 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 risk-assessment engine, finance projects using standardised tools and finally, monitor and report on projects’ post financing.

We’re making carbon projects financing 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 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!

We are backed by leading multi-stage and climate tech VCs such as Atomico, Pale Blue Dot, My Climate Journey and supported by unicorn founders and accomplished operators from Klarna, Stripe, Eventbrite and Kinnevik amongst others.

Opna is looking for an experienced and ambitious Carbon solutions lead Your mission is to help us become a trusted advisor and partner to climate action committed businesses exploring or already engaged in carbon removal. This is a business development role, backed by strong previous experience in carbon removals and/or voluntary carbon markets. 

Your Role

In this role, you will be a hands-on leader and as well a strong individual contributor. You are the go-to person in the Opna team for Carbon market expertise and strategy - be it technical, diligence, market-specific, policy, commercial, or deal structure. This expertise and experience will also lead from the front in our business development and customer conversations. You will closely work with our CEO, our Head of Product, and our GTM/growth function to leverage customer and market insights for our strategy and product. This is also a visible, public role, where you will be evangelising and helping build the Opna brand in the market and with customers/prospects.  

Your Responsibilities

• Ownership of our Carbon Strategy and execution as it relates to clients and project developers 
• You will work closely with our GTM team and our founder, Shilps to identify and execute new business opportunities
• You will advise current and prospective customers on their carbon markets and carbon removal strategy and how Opna’s approach and platform can help them with forms of carbon financing such as offtakes
• You are responsible for shaping our carbon market strategy in line with client expectations, supply availability, and commercial and policy considerations. 
• You will guide our customers and our internal teams on project diligence, technical considerations, and any commercial/deal structuring decisions related to the selection of our project development partners
• You will work with our sales tools and CRM to build insights and capture feedback to improve our processes and products.

• Help build the internal know-how, thought leadership, and collateral to support clients 
• In carbon markets, in particular carbon removal, most customers need a high level of initial support, be it with information on projects, market trends, projects due diligence, project portfolios, contracts, and legal and deal structuring- You will work closely with the wider Opna team to get relevant collateral/ opinion pieces for clients, internal know-how and for sharing publicly.
• Contribute to building Opna as a trusted brand and voice in the carbon markets/carbon removal space
• Work closely with Shilps and our GTM team to speak at events/ publish opinion pieces, content, and guides that will help build our brand in the wider carbon market and with our customers and project developers

We think you will thrive here if…

• 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 care deeply about customer and business needs and see technology as the most effective solution. 
• You can prioritise effectively is a critical distinction because your focus will be both internal and external - helping our product/GTM teams on the carbon expertise and customer front, and serving our customers' needs directly.
• You want to, and are comfortable working in an early stage/resource-constrained environment, where your role may stretch beyond the responsibilities of a senior role and your day-to-day will involve rapid changes and associated chaos. 
• You see technology and new tools as a way to help clients and carbon markets become more transparent, accountable and efficient.

Experience Needed

• Experience (direct experience) doing business development/sales in carbon removal and carbon projects financing, working with corporates/financial institutions and/or project developers.
• Deep understanding of carbon markets methodologies, technologies, and standards, preferably also in CDR
• Deep understanding of the corporate claims, standards and net-zero pathways that inform how corporates make carbon removal decisions.
• You have a strong network and understanding of the Voluntary carbon market landscape - industry bodies, frameworks, developers, market trends, consultants and service providers.
• You have a proven, successful track record helping corporates/net-zero meet their carbon strategy via voluntary carbon markets.

You will thrive here if you:

• Believe that climate change is the number one problem to solve
• Bring extreme sense of ownership and urgency to get stuff done, to a high standard.
• Thrive on clear communication and expectation setting 
• Desire high accountability, high visibility, and high-impact career
• Are confident in their ability to proactively collaborate and be autonomous
• Are resilient, hard working, and robust to changing environments. Will roll their sleeves up and fight the fires when needed
• Want 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.
• Are curious, open to differing opinions, and enjoy sharing your Carbon markets knowledge and perspective.
• Want to work in person with your colleagues in London because it creates faster knowledge sharing and strategy loops.

We’re swift at moving things along for you. We need you to meet several people (onsite/virtually) because of the responsibility that comes with this role and ensure this is right for you.

• Screening with recruiter/ Opna Chief of Staff Matt
• Video call with our CEO, Shilpika Gautam
• Carbon Markets Task (onsite in London, preferably)
• Meet the team
• Call with a board member/investor+ References + personality test.
• Final offer

Competitive salary, generous options, 25 days holiday + bank holidays, pension, homeworking set-up allowance.

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. 100% of our team today has their roots in the global south, and over half of our pre-seed investors identify as women. We speak English, Hindi, Spanish and French across our team.