Science Lead

Cascade Climate is seeking a Science Lead to oversee their science initiatives in Enhanced Rock Weathering and geochemical carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The role involves thought leadership, partnership building, and team development. Candidates should have expertise in geochemistry and the carbon cycle. This full-time position is based in Boston, MA, with a salary range of $175,000 to $225,000 annually.
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.

Job posting details for Science Lead at Cascade Climate in Boston, MA. Compensation / salary range: 175,000 - 225,000 USD, yearly. ClimateTechList gathers 20,000+ job openings from over 765 climate tech companies and updates them daily.