Senior Carbon Scientist

Department: Carbon Project Development :
Carbon Credits Own Development

Employment Type: Permanent
- Full Time

Location: South Africa
- Cape Town

Anthesis Group is the world's largest dedicated sustainability consultancy.

We have more than 1,500 experts across 46 offices in 23 countries, and we are a certified B-Corporation.

Our Carbon Development Unit is co-led from South Africa and the Netherlands, and has contracted over 20 million tonnes of carbon credits worldwide.

Anthesis South Africa develops, verifies and transacts carbon credits across agriculture, renewable energy, household energy, waste and nature-based solutions.

Our carbon farming portfolio operates exclusively on Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) VM0042 methodology (Improved Agricultural Land Management) and includes Agri Carbon (VCS 2554), which in March 2025 became the first project in Africa to issue credits under VM0042; SARA (VCS 3432), covering Argentina, Paraguay and Chile; and ReTerra Brazil (VCS 5774).

We are a member of the Project Developer Forum, and a founding member of the Southern Africa Carbon Markets Association.

Our work is built on market integrity, scientific rigour and real sustainable development co-benefits.

You will carry out and quality-assure the soil carbon science and modelling that sits underneath our carbon farming programmes and broader nature based projects. Your role will support the models, the sampling design the statistics, and building and maintaining a robust and transparent evidence trail that stands up to a verification audit.

You will also help us manage change. Verra continues to revise the VCS Standard and associated methodologies, and each new version has real consequences for registered projects as well as those in the pipeline. You will work out what each change means, then lead the transition.

This is a hands‑on scientific role, and its consequences are commercial as much as technical. The quality of the carbon quantification helps us determine how many credits we issue, and these credits fund the programme and reward our farmers.

You will report to our Principal Carbon Specialist – Nature-based Solutions and work closely with our carbon developers, analysts, agronomy partners and data platform teams in South Africa and the Netherlands.

The role combines scientific excellence with practical application, requiring the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, accessible language for a range of audiences, including auditors, project teams, farmers, and buyers.

• Lead the research component required for running, calibrating, and re-validating the Roth-C soil organic carbon model as implemented across our VM0042 projects. Ensure model validation results are correctly and clearly interpreted.
• Lead the drafting of model validation reports and the responses to comments from reviewers, independent modelling experts, and auditors related to the model validation or soil carbon quantification.
• Ensure model performance is validated against measured soil data following guidance and requirements stipulated by VM0042 and it’s associated tools and modules. Document the evidence so a third party can reproduce it.
• Ensure alignment of model validation outcomes to uncertainty deductions as required by VM0042 and it’s associated tools and modules.
• Contribute to soil sampling design (including statistical analyses for sample size calculations aligned to stratification of project areas), and maintain the in-field soil sampling protocol to meet the evolving requirements of VM0042 and it’s associated tools and modules.

• Track Verra's revisions to the VCS…