Open Roles

Director of Data & Impact Assessment

Location: Remote

Employment Type: Full-time

Salary: $110,000-$130,000 per year

About us: Carbon Yield is a small, dynamic company at the forefront of regenerative agriculture and climate innovation. We manage a growing portfolio of projects, including Climate TRACE, the Grassland Resilience and Conservation Initiative, consulting with the USDA Office of the Chief Economist, and technical advisory services to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. We design and run regenerative agriculture programs, primarily supply chain partnerships that leverage public funding and payments for outcomes to accelerate and finance farmer adoption of regenerative practices. Our team is impact-oriented and collaborative, and we value new ideas, innovative approaches, and connection.

Position overview: We are seeking a Director of Data & Impact Assessment to shape how Carbon Yield measures, models, and reports the outcomes of its programs. This person will manage our modeling and technical partnerships, maintain the databases behind our work, and oversee the internal processes that ensure the integrity of our reporting. This senior role reports to the co-founders. The ideal candidate pairs deep experience in agricultural modeling with steady, generous collaboration.

Key responsibilities

Outcomes modeling and MRV (30%)

  • Lead quantification of soil carbon, GHG, and other outcomes across our programs, including the Grassland Resilience and Conservation Initiative and corporate Scope 3 work.

  • Carry out due diligence of quantification approaches that support our projects and collaborations.

  • Document methods, assumptions, and uncertainty.

  • Prepare data and analysis for project design documents, validation, and verification.

  • Lead Carbon Yield’s work on global emissions inventories, such as Climate TRACE, by managing teams of research partners, building and maintaining global emissions inventories, reconciling outputs against published benchmarks, and preparing submission-ready datasets.

  • Use geospatial and remote sensing analyses to monitor indicators of regenerative agriculture adoption, such as satellite-detected tillage practices, and design the data collection process needed to refine and validate assessments.

Data platform and app (25%)

  • Own data systems for the Michigan Regenerative Dairy program (USDA NRCS / NACD), including producer enrollment, incentive deployment, and outcome reporting.

  • Set requirements for our custom data collection app and direct our data engineering and UI/UX contractors.

  • Build data pipelines, QA/QC procedures, and data governance that protect farmer data and improve reliability of outputs.

  • Help our team assess, test, and integrate new technological innovations that make our work more efficient, reliable, and scalable.

  • Deploy AI coding and analysis tools where appropriate to accelerate data pipelines, geospatial workflows, and model development while maintaining output integrity.

Team leadership (20%)

  • Manage 1-2 internal research collaborators to help them meet project milestones, grow their skills, and advance our mission. 

  • Manage external research partners and subcontractors. 

  • Set deliverables, track timelines, and flag project risks.

  • Build lightweight AI-assisted workflows for cases when they save real time, such as extracting data from PDFs, reports, and farm records, or drafting client-facing summaries for human review.

Partner-facing analysis (25%)

  • Turn analysis into clear reports, dashboards, proposals, and presentations for funders, research partners, agencies, co-ops, and farmers.

  • Support business development with data-driven program design and impact estimates.

Required qualifications

  • 8+ years of quantitative experience, including 3+ years in agriculture, soils, livestock, or closely related environmental systems

  • Hands-on experience with modeling pipelines, such as crop models, greenhouse gas assessment, or production-grade agricultural remote sensing

  • 2+ years leading people or teams, including contractors

  • Proficiency in Git, Python, and SQL, and experience with geospatial data and tools

  • Proven ability to explain technical results to non-technical audiences

  • Ability to build trust with diverse stakeholders: conservation staff, corporate sustainability teams, scientists, and farmers

Preferred qualifications

  • Experience with carbon or ecosystem-service protocols and verification

  • Familiarity with USDA NRCS practices, conservation planning, or federal grant reporting

  • Experience in dairy, grazing, or cropping systems

  • Experience in an early-stage or small organization

What we offer

  • Competitive salary of $110,000-$130,000 per year

  • Remote work flexibility

  • Unlimited flexible time off with a yearly minimum of 4 weeks PTO

  • Summer 4-day weeks (Mondays off, Memorial Day through Labor Day)

  • Paid family and medical leave

  • Health insurance coverage or a stipend for existing coverage

  • Impactful, cutting-edge work in agriculture and climate with a collaborative, mission-driven team

How to apply

Send your resume and a cover letter to admin@carbon-yield.com, along with a document containing your answers to these three questions in 150 words or fewer each:

  1. Tell us about a modeling exercise or impact assessment process you have helped lead where being wrong would have mattered. What checks did you run to trust the output, and was there a time those checks caught a problem? 

  2. Tell us about a time you led someone through a difficult change.

  3. Why Carbon Yield, and why now?

Applications are due by November 6, 2026.

Carbon Yield celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.