Climate Data Scientist, Sustainability San Francisco Remote

About Watershed

Watershed is the enterprise sustainability platform. Companies like Airbnb, Carlyle Group, Fed Ex, Visa, and Dr. Martens use Watershed to manage climate and ESG data, produce audit-ready metrics for voluntary and regulatory reporting including CSRD, and drive real decarbonization. We are looking for team members who love product-building, want to work hard at a mission-oriented startup, and will collaborate with us in shaping the culture of a growing team.

We have offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City, and remote team members across the US and Europe. We hope that you'll be interested in joining us!

Domain expertise in the science of sustainability is the foundation upon which Watershed is built. On the Methodology team, we work at the nexus of corporate sustainability, sustainability science, data, and software — developing the methods that turn raw business data into auditable sustainability data and actionable sustainability insight.

This is a technical, hands‑on, and highly collaborative role. You’ll work closely with software engineers, data scientists, and product managers to build and maintain Watershed’s industry‑leading built‑in methodologies: keeping them up to date with the latest scientific developments and standards, developing pragmatic and innovative approaches to emerging challenges, and maintaining our high bar for scientific rigor and integrity.

This is an applied science role, where your knowledge and expertise will become product capabilities used by companies to understand and reduce their real‑world impact. You’ll need to understand not only the scientific fundamentals of sustainability, but also how they apply across business contexts, sectors, data realities, legislation, and standards. Great corporate sustainability programs that drive real change are built on credible, accessible, and actionable data — this is our North Star.

• Develop, maintain, and improve Watershed’s built‑in sustainability methodologies, translating sustainability science, GHG accounting standards, and emerging regulatory requirements into robust product logic.

• Partner closely with software engineers, data scientists, and product managers to design methodology features that are scientifically rigorous, auditable, scalable, and intuitive for customers.

• Work directly in and around the codebase: reviewing methodology implementations, writing clear technical specifications, contributing configuration or logic where appropriate, and helping build tests that give us confidence in scientific correctness.

• Interpret evolving standards and guidance — including the GHG Protocol, sustainability reporting frameworks, and sector‑specific methodologies — and determine how they should be reflected in Watershed’s product.

• Investigate complex customer and product questions where sustainability science, data quality, accounting rules, and business context intersect.

• Build pragmatic approaches for messy real‑world business data, balancing scientific rigor with usability, auditability, and customer impact.

• Collaborate with our go‑to‑market and customer‑facing teams to explain methodology choices clearly to customers, auditors, and other stakeholders.

• Help set the bar for scientific quality across Watershed by documenting decisions, reviewing methodology changes, and contributing to our internal methodology standards.

• Have a Master’s or PhD in climate science, environmental science, sustainability, industrial ecology, or another relevant quantitative field.

• Have 5+ years of experience in corporate sustainability, sustainability consulting, carbon accounting, climate strategy, or a related field — ideally working with…