Senior Field Technician - Soil Carbon

Are you ready to embark on an extraordinary adventure that will revitalise landscapes, combat climate change, and promote sustainable agriculture?

Join Nat Carbon Africa: a mission-driven, proudly African organisation dedicated to high-quality implementation of large-scale carbon, climate, and biodiversity projects. We embrace the power of innovative technology to enhance project execution. Community engagement lies at the heart of our projects, driven by a genuine commitment to meaningful and inclusive participation and co-benefits, such as biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic upliftment.

Nat Carbon Africa seeks a Senior Field Technician in the Technical and Carbon Department for the large-scale Spekboom Restoration Project in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa.

With our partner, Imperative Global, our aim is to restore up to 100,000 hectares of degraded subtropical thicket biome. The Project entails planting Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) on privately owned land to improve ecosystem functioning and agricultural productivity over time, promote biodiversity, improve soil filtration, enhance water storage capabilities, and to reduce soil erosion. The Project is estimated to permanently store large quantities of Carbon Dioxide over the Project life, thus positively contributing towards climate change mitigation.

The Senior Field Technician – Soil Carbon will report directly to the Restoration Ecologist and will lead the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) work stream within the Ecology Team, working alongside two other Senior Field Technicians responsible for the Biomass Carbon and Biodiversity work streams. The role is responsible for leading, coordinating and mentoring a team of four junior staff in the planning, implementation, and reporting of SOC baseline and monitoring activities across the project area, including soil sampling and the operation of the project’s soil processing laboratory.

All SOC deliverables must be completed on time, within budget, to the highest technical standards, and in line with the requirements of the project’s carbon accounting methodology. The role combines field- and laboratory-based leadership with hands‑on data collection and sample processing, and will also contribute to the quantification of Above‑Ground Biomass (AGB) carbon pools when the need arises.

• Serve as the point of contact between the Restoration Ecologist and the SOC field team.

• Plan, lead, and coordinate the daily and long‑term activities of the SOC team, including weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual schedules for baseline and monitoring campaigns, aligned with the Biomass Carbon and Biodiversity work streams to make efficient use of shared team resources.

• Supervise, mentor, and provide on‑the‑job training to Field Technicians and Young Professionals in field sampling, laboratory procedures, data handling and reporting to build capacity and ensure consistent, high‑quality outputs.

• Oversee SOC field and laboratory logistics, including vehicle scheduling, field equipment, sample transport, and coordination with other project teams as required.

• Develop, in collaboration with the Restoration Ecologist and external partners, SOC sampling designs for baseline and monitoring surveys (including stratification, plot allocation, sampling depths, and replication).

• Conduct and supervise soil sampling, bulk density and coarse‑fragment measurements, ensuring correct sample collection, labelling, documentation, and chain of…