Climate Scientist

The Supercritical Mission

Supercritical is the leading carbon removal marketplace: 1 in 5 corporate carbon removal buyers are customers. The company builds the commercial architecture that turns carbon removal pledges into delivered tonnes, sourcing, creating, and guaranteeing permanent supply for corporate buyers running multi-year procurement programs. It has facilitated nearly 2 million tonnes of carbon removal for 200+ buyers and tracks 600+ suppliers across roughly 80% of the global permanent CDR market.

Quality is the strategy. Supercritical’s independent science team vets every project across 118 data points and rejects 88% of what it assesses, and the same scientists help set the standards buyers will be measured against, including on SBTi’s Expert Working Group for carbon removals. When the right supply does not exist, Supercritical creates it: Liferaft was co-designed from the ground up for Microsoft’s 1-million-tonne offtake, the largest biochar offtake in US history, signed in under 18 months. Every contract carries three layers of delivery protection. More than 300,000 tonnes have already been delivered and retired, with zero missed retirements to date.

The mission has never been more explicit. The UN now says the world is set to overshoot 1.5°C, and that carbon removal, alongside deep emissions cuts, is essential to coming back. The requirement is roughly 10 billion tonnes a year by 2050; all the permanent removal ever delivered adds up to less than a single day of that. Supercritical exists to close the gap. Its mission: scale carbon removal to gigatonnes by building the connective infrastructure for the market. Founded in 2021 by Michelle You and Aaron Randall, the team behind Songkick, Supercritical is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, MMC Ventures, RTP Global, GreenCode Ventures, and LocalGlobe.

The role

This is an opportunity to work at the cutting edge of carbon removal and work directly with the largest buyers in the market to build robust, high-integrity CDR portfolios. You will build trust by communicating the science of carbon removal and providing expert advice.

This role is broader than a standard climate science position. Alongside supporting our sales team, you will help deliver Supercritical's paid advisory work: policy and regulatory advice, CDR strategy and portfolio design, and commissioned research, sold to corporate buyers as engagements in their own right. Our clients include some of the world's best-known companies, and they come to us because they need to defend multi-year carbon removal commitments to their boards, auditors, and regulators.

You will lead our defined-scope advisory engagements yourself, holding the client relationship and owning the deliverable. On our largest and most complex engagements you will work alongside our Director of Climate Science and Policy, who leads those projects, and you will take on progressively more of that leadership as you build a track record. This is a rare chance to combine deep scientific work with real commercial ownership, and to help build a new advisory practice from its first engagements.