Role Summary
ARIA’s Forecasting Tipping Points programme aims to create a sustained, public-good early warning system for climate tipping points.
It is bringing together new approaches to ocean observation, forecasting and decision-focused climate evidence, initially centred on the North Atlantic subpolar gyre, so that governments, communities and other decision-makers can act earlier and with greater confidence.
With an ambitious portfolio of R&D Creators established across startups, academia, and non-profit R&D organisations, the programme is moving from advancing the underlying science and technology to demonstrating an integrated capability that people and institutions can trust, use and sustain.
That requires working backwards from consequential decisions, integrating complex systems, building legitimacy with affected communities and creating an institutional and financing model that can preserve essential public goods over the long term.
What you'll do
- Build a usable early warning capability
- Act as ARIA’s point of contact for systems integration, aligning observing, modelling and product teams around clear interfaces, dependencies and assurance.
- Co-specify the early warning system MVP with the Programme Directors and define future portfolio pathways that maximise near-term translation opportunities, with clear outcomes, resources and evidence.
- Lead delivery against translation milestones, including relationships with programme Fellows and system partners. Use evidence to recommend when ARIA should progress, reshape, redirect or stop work to keep the portfolio moving.
- Form an enduring model
- Alongside the Programme Directors and Science and Technology Lead, define the observations, calibrated open data, provenance, methods, assessment, assurance and communication that must endure beyond the programme’s timeframe and protect the public good mission.
- Test options for governance, assurance, operations and finance against scientific independence, international legitimacy, public access, operational resilience and Greenlandic data sovereignty.
- Generate and convert interest from governments, philanthropic co-funders, multilateral bodies, and scientific and operational institutions into clear roles, committed resources and sustained support.
- Create translation routes across ARIA’s climate programmes
- Work backwards from real decisions with users, buyers, operators and affected communities, translating their needs into product and technical requirements, testing those requirements through pilots, scenarios and workflow tests, and using the evidence to steer observing, modelling and product choices.
- Secure partnerships for validation, operating environments, co-development, procurement or co-funding, that open near-term routes to use across ARIA’s other climate programmes, including Exploring Climate Cooling.
- Sharpen value propositions, routes to adoption and continuity plans, then connect Creator teams with the partners, capabilities and follow-on resources they need to give them a credible next step.
Who you are
No specific degree, job title or conventional climate career is required.
You may have developed these capabilities in mission-led product development, climate services, public-interest technology, institution building, systems integration, government, philanthropy, venture building or research translation.
What matters is evidence of what you have made happen.
Essential criteria
- You are expert in building momentum around an issue and can translate technical climate data into actionable information.
- You have turned technically complex R&D in the climate space into an integrated service, product, or operational capability.
- You can align scientists, engineers and systems integrators to deliver a usable product.
- You can use discovery, pilots, scenarios and workflow tests with users, operators and affected communities to shape product and technical choices.
- You can build relationships across government, philanthropy, science, industry and public bodies that lead to agreed roles, resources, adoption or co-funding.
Desirable criteria
- Experience in building or operating an enduring institution or public-interest service.
- Experience working in or with governments, or navigating complex geopolitical issues.
- Experience in climate or Earth-system science, Earth observation, forecasting, climate services or environmental data infrastructure.
- Experience of public or philanthropic finance, multilateral collaboration or sustaining public-interest infrastructure beyond its original funding period.
- Experience with open data, scientific assurance, data provenance, data sovereignty or community-led research.
Benefits
- 27 days annual leave provision, with the option to buy/sell additional days
- Hybrid working arrangements; 60% in office / 40% at home
- Supportive environment for learning and development opportunities
- Enhanced family leave arrangements
- A free and confidential 24/7 employee assistance programme
- 2 days of paid volunteer days
- 5% defined contribution pension scheme with Smart Pension
- Cycle to Work scheme
- An excellent office location in Kings X, London