Director of Engineering - Earth Data Hub

What is Sylvera anyway? ‍👩‍👨🌳

Sylvera provides carbon data for genuine climate impact. Our mission is to incentivize investment in real climate action. 

Purchasing credits through the carbon markets is one of the most established and scalable ways to channel finance from the private sector to effective climate solutions and work toward societal net zero. Unfortunately, the voluntary carbon markets have been plagued with mistrust and a lack of effectiveness since they’ve emerged – until Sylvera. 

To help organizations ensure they're making the most effective investments, Sylvera builds software that independently and accurately automates the evaluation of carbon projects that capture, remove, or avoid emissions. With Sylvera's data and tools, businesses and governments can confidently invest in, benchmark, deliver, and report real climate impact. 

Our team is made up of leading minds in climate change from scientists to policy, finance and carbon market experts. We work in partnership with scientific organisations, universities, governments and think tanks to develop and test rigorous and holistic ratings methodologies, leveraging the latest technology. Founded in 2020, Sylvera has 150+ employees across the world with offices in London, New York, Belgrade and Singapore. We’ve raised over $96million from leading VCs like Balderton Capital, Index Ventures and Insight Partners to date. 

What will I be doing? ‍‍👩‍💻👨‍💻

The Director of Engineering for Earth Data Hub (EDH) is a pivotal leadership role within Sylvera, spearheading the delivery at scale of the highest quality data products underpinned by world-class field data and innovative machine learning (ML) models. The outputs of EDH are instrumental for Sylvera’s assessment of carbon offset projects and the delivery of actionable insights that incentivise investment in climate action. 

This role is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to lead talented field science, ML, geospatial and engineering cross-functional teams. The challenges we face are proportional to the immense impact EDH has for our customers. For example, our biomass data is of unparalleled accuracy - and a host of new EDH products is poised to revolutionise the supply of carbon credits. There’s no better way to make a difference in climate action than working with our talented EDH team members.

Specific Responsibilities will include:

• Balance technical leadership with execution, ensuring that we deliver value to our enterprise customers at scale.
• Design, articulate, and propagate a compelling technical vision for the EDH, aligning with our broader organisational objectives.
• Foster a culture of innovation, encouraging the exploration of new methodologies and technologies to continuously advance our data products and analytics capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with other organisational leaders, ensuring not only the seamless integration of the EDH's goals with the wider company strategy but also a closely aligned, silo-free, delivery of those objectives across all functions at Sylvera

• Lead the engineering efforts to design and optimise ML models that range from quantifying biomass to predicting forest gain and loss, thus playing a  critical role in climate change mitigation.
• Ensure a robust, agile, and iterative product development process, promoting a production-first ethos to guarantee products are transitioned from R&D to production within predictable timelines.
• Lead the drive towards building products that address genuine customer needs, putting end-to-end value at the forefront and ensuring the alignment of product development with market demands and customer feedback.
• Oversee the establishment and adherence to data contracts, ensuring a seamless integration across different data product teams and systems.
• Oversee work tracking in tools like JIRA, ensuring proper backlog management, sprint planning, and effective estimation of velocity to maintain a predictable delivery cadence.

• Think holistically, viewing the product from the customer’s perspective, working closely with the product team, not just to execute against a roadmap, but to influence product decisions.
• Embed a product mindset into the EDH teams, helping cultivate a culture that prioritises delivering customer-centric solutions without compromising on data quality.
• Cultivate a culture of technical excellence, ensuring the application of best practices in data science, ML, and software engineering.
• Drive the execution of the EDH's technical roadmap, ensuring timely delivery while maintaining high-quality standards.

We’re looking for someone who has: 🧠💚

- A proven track record of leading engineering and R&D teams in the design, development, and delivery of complex data products, preferably in a B2B or enterprise environment.

- Strong financial acumen with a history of making data-driven decisions that balance cost, resource allocation, and impact, while continuously improving team productivity and effectiveness.

- Robust understanding of agile and iterative development methodologies, with experience in scaling such practices within growing organisations.

- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to inspire and lead cross-functional teams towards achieving a shared vision.

- A master's or higher degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Data Science, or related disciplines is preferred.

We’d like someone highly ambitious, motivated and eager to propel their career forward. We prioritise grit, positivity, and the willingness to get stuck in, and encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't exactly match this job description

Benefits 💰

- Equity in a rapidly growing startup

- Private Health Insurance and Life Assurance 

- Unlimited annual leave - and encouragement to actually use it!

- Enhanced parental leave 

- Up to 20 days paid sick leave 

- £500 WFH allowance 

- No corners cut in having the best tech to do your job

- Access to Mental Health support via Spill

- Monthly team socials

Location 🌍 

UK (with access to an office in London if you wanted to come in) 

Our Values 🙌

Own it: We make new mistakes. We build on the momentum of our wins and reflect on and learn from our failures.

Stay curious: We keep our focus on the long-term, even if that means short-term challenges.

Do what’s right - even when it’s hard: We take a growth mindset to our work, our customers, our market and the opportunities ahead of us. 

Collaborate and challenge with empathy: Our teams deliver through active collaboration. We invest in each others’ success and make the company stronger in the long-run.

Empower Customers: Make extraordinary efforts to exceed our customer expectations. If we’re serving our customers to the fullest, we can help direct more investment into real climate impact.

What if you’re a partial fit? 🌱

We prioritise grit, positivity, and the willingness to get stuck in, and encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't exactly match this job description. 

Equal employment opportunity 🌈

Sylvera is an equal opportunity employer: we value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.