Senior Carbon Project Developer — Agriculture (AFOLU)

Varaha is hiring a Senior Carbon Project Developer to lead the technical development and registration of agricultural carbon projects under Verra (VCS), Gold Standard, and Isometric. Varaha's current AFOLU portfolio spans rice methane, regenerative agriculture (soil carbon and emissions reductions), and agroforestry across India, South & Southeast Asia, and Africa.

You will own the full project development lifecycle for assigned projects — from baseline design through PDD authoring, validation, monitoring, verification, and issuance. You will translate field-collected data and management practice changes into audit-ready carbon documentation, and you will be the primary PDD-level interface with Validation and Verification Bodies (VVBs) for your projects.

This is a hands-on, execution-focused role. You will work closely with Varaha's Project, Science, Technology, and Commercial teams, and you will represent Varaha to registries, VVBs, and external partners.

Reports to the Director of Science, with day-to-day coordination through the Carbon Project Lead. 

What you will own

• End-to-end authorship of Project Design Documents (PDDs) and Monitoring Reports (MRs) for AFOLU projects under methodologies such as VM0042 (Improved Agricultural Land Management), VM0047 (Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation), VM0051 (Methane Emission Reductions from Rice Production), the Isometric Rice Methane Reduction protocol, and equivalent Gold Standard methodologies.

• Baseline construction, additionality demonstration, leakage assessment, and integration of ex-ante and ex-post quantification outputs from Varaha's Science team into PDDs and MRs.

• Direct engagement with VVBs on PDD- and MR-level Corrective Action Requests (CARs), Clarification Requests (CLs), and Forward Action Requests (FARs); coordination with the Modeling Lead on model-specific VVB queries.

• Coordination with Varaha's Project, Science, and Technology teams to ensure field protocols, sample design, and data pipelines meet methodology requirements.

• Carbon feasibility assessments and methodology applicability reviews for new project geographies, crop systems, and practice bundles.

• Tracking methodology updates, registry rule changes, and relevant Article 6.2 / 6.4 and CORSIA developments that affect Varaha's project pipeline.

What we're looking for

• 4–7 years in voluntary carbon markets, with demonstrated ownership of at least one PDD through registration.

• Working knowledge of Verra (VCS), Gold Standard, and/or Isometric project cycles, validation and verification processes, and registry submission systems.

• Hands-on experience applying AFOLU methodologies — rice methane (VM0051, Isometric Rice Methane Reduction), soil carbon (VM0042), or ARR (VM0047, AR-ACM0003) experience is required. Direct experience with VVBs is required.

• Strong technical writing in English: ability to produce audit-ready documents that pass VVB review with limited rework.

• Strong data handling in Excel; comfort with structured datasets, methodology equations, and uncertainty deductions.

• Practical understanding of where field data comes from and what makes it defensible under audit.

Preferred

• Master's degree in environmental science, agricultural science, soil science, forestry, climate policy, or a related quantitative field.

• Prior carbon consultancy experience across multiple project types or jurisdictions.

• Experience operating in India, Southeast Asia, or Sub-Saharan African agricultural systems.

• Familiarity with process-based biogeochemical models (DayCent, DNDC, RothC) or remote-sensing-based monitoring approaches.

• Working proficiency in Python for data processing, methodology equation implementation, and reproducible analysis (pandas, numpy, jupyter).

• Experience integrating LLM-assisted workflows into PDD or MR development.

Willingness to travel for field visits, audits, registry events, and internal meetings.

We hire for strategic alignment and cultural fit. If you bring exceptional capability with slightly more or less experience than the band above, we'd still like to hear from you.