Position summary

On the Methodology team, this technical, hands-on, and highly collaborative applied-science role builds and maintains Watershed's industry-leading built-in methodologies. Working closely with software engineers, data scientists, and product managers, you will keep methodologies up to date with the latest scientific developments and standards, develop pragmatic approaches to emerging challenges, and maintain a high bar for scientific rigor and integrity, turning your knowledge into product capabilities used by companies to understand and reduce their real-world impact.

Why this role matters

This role is central to the scientific credibility of Watershed's platform. By translating sustainability science, GHG accounting standards, and emerging regulation into robust product logic, and by keeping methodologies rigorous, auditable, and usable against messy real-world data, the Climate Data Scientist ensures customers build credible, actionable sustainability programs.

Key responsibilities

• Methodology development: Develop, maintain, and improve Watershed's built-in sustainability methodologies, translating sustainability science, GHG accounting standards, and emerging regulatory requirements into robust product logic.
• Cross-functional design: Partner with software engineers, data scientists, and product managers to design methodology features that are scientifically rigorous, auditable, scalable, and intuitive.
• Codebase work: Work in and around the codebase, reviewing methodology implementations, writing technical specifications, contributing configuration or logic where appropriate, and helping build tests for scientific correctness.
• Standards interpretation: Interpret evolving standards and guidance (including the GHG Protocol, reporting frameworks, and sector-specific methodologies) and determine how they should be reflected in the product.
• Complex questions: Investigate complex customer and product questions where sustainability science, data quality, accounting rules, and business context intersect, building pragmatic approaches for messy real-world data.
• Stakeholder communication: Collaborate with go-to-market and customer-facing teams to explain methodology choices to customers, auditors, and other stakeholders, and help set the bar for scientific quality by documenting decisions and contributing to internal methodology standards.

Team and stakeholders

The role works on the Methodology team alongside software engineers, data scientists, and product managers, and with go-to-market and customer-facing teams, customers, auditors, verifiers, and academics.

Key details

• Work arrangement: Where Watershed has offices (hubs in San Francisco, New York, London, and Mexico City; satellites in Denver, Sydney, Paris, and Berlin), employees are expected in office four days per week unless a role is noted as remote.
• Compensation: $193,500 to $202,100.

Requirements:

• Master's or PhD in climate science, environmental science, sustainability, industrial ecology, or another relevant quantitative field.
• 5+ years of experience in corporate sustainability, sustainability consulting, carbon accounting, climate strategy, or a related field, ideally with large, complex organizations.
• A systems thinker able to move between interconnected sustainability/business systems and high-leverage technical solutions.
• Deep knowledge of prevailing GHG accounting standards and reporting frameworks (at minimum the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and Scope 3 Standard; Land Sector and Removals Guidance and updated ESRS a plus).
• Able to work in a Python codebase (comfortable reading code and making contributions; not a software engineering role).
• Able to communicate complex ideas clearly to scientific experts, auditors, customers, engineers, and data scientists.
• Bonus: building carbon accounting methodologies, emissions factor datasets, or LCA models; assurance/audit familiarity; Python/SQL/TypeScript; and translating standards into technical specifications.