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About the Role

The Head of the Impacts, Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team provides strategic, scientific and organisational leadership. The Head is responsible for shaping the team’s scientific direction, strengthening its external profile, ensuring high-quality delivery, building a strong funding pipeline, and supporting group leads and senior experts to produce work that is scientifically cutting-edge and practically relevant. This role requires a senior scientist and strategic leader with a strong publication record, recognised expertise in climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage, climate risk, and/or climate economics or a closely related field, and the ability to build an ambitious, high-quality and financially sustainable body of work.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the strategic direction of the team, ensuring alignment with Climate Analytics’ mission, organisational priorities and evolving thematic focus areas.
Lead the development of a coherent team strategy across adaptation, loss and damage, climate impacts, climate risk and related economics work.
Provide intellectual and scientific leadership across the team’s areas of expertise, identifying priority scientific and policy questions where Climate Analytics can make distinctive, high-impact contributions.
Maintain an active personal research agenda and strengthen the team’s publication record, including peer-reviewed papers, flagship reports, policy-relevant assessments, tools, datasets and high-profile analytical products.
Promote innovative methods and approaches for assessing climate risks, adaptation needs, loss and damage, vulnerability, limits to adaptation, economic costs and distributional impacts.
Support interdisciplinary analysis that connects physical climate risk, socio-economic vulnerability, adaptation feasibility, financing needs, institutional capacity and implementation pathways.
Establish and encourage linkages to the Earth System Science and 1.5°C Overshoot Team to facilitate collaboration and workflows on from climate science to impacts and resilience.
Ensure that uncertainty, limits to adaptation, residual risk, non-economic losses and irreversible impacts are treated with scientific integrity and communicated clearly.
Oversee quality assurance for major outputs – including scientific review, methodological consistency and fit-for-purpose communication – and uphold the highest standards of scientific integrity across the team’s work.
Monitor emerging developments in adaptation science, loss and damage, climate risk, economics and finance, and identify strategic gaps or opportunities for the team to lead on.
Contribute to organisation-wide strategy, including cross-team and cross-region initiatives.
Promote a “one science function” culture across the two teams, supporting shared scientific standards, transparent communication, and practical collaboration across groups, avoiding fragmentation, including regular joint planning with the on cross-cutting scientific priorities.
Ensure complex scientific findings are translated into clear, accessible and actionable insights for policymakers, negotiators, funders, implementing partners and other decision-makers.
Strengthen the team’s ability to support country-level and regional decision-making on adaptation planning, loss and damage, climate finance and implementation.
Work closely with the Climate Policy Team, Implementation Strategies Team, Climate Diplomacy Team, the Earth System Science and 1.5°C Overshoot Team and Climate Analytics’ regional offices to ensure scientific analysis informs policy, negotiations and implementation support.
Support the development of decision-support tools, guidance, briefs, visual products and targeted analysis for vulnerable countries and international processes.
Ensure the team’s work is responsive to the needs of SIDS, LDCs and other vulnerable countries while maintaining scientific independence and credibility.
Connect the team’s work to broader organisational priorities on 1.5°C alignment, overshoot, finance, implementation, and contribute to organisation-wide initiatives.
Lead and support the development of new programmes, projects and funding proposals in the team’s areas of work, building toward scalable, programmatic impact beyond individual projects.
Identify and cultivate strategic funding opportunities with public, philanthropic, multilateral, European and research funders.
Expand relationships with leading scientific institutions, universities, think tanks, implementing partners, funders and international organisations; develop consortia and partnerships that further strengthen Climate Analytics’ scientific profile and funding competitiveness.
Support group leads and senior staff to shape concepts, frame impact, develop budgets and align proposals with funder priorities.
Monitor the team’s funding pipeline, identifying opportunities, risks and capacity constraints; ensure the portfolio balances scientific excellence, strategic relevance, organisational sustainability and real-world impact.
Oversee delivery of projects and workstreams involving the team, ensuring timeliness, quality and alignment with objectives; ensure effective coordination across groups, teams, offices and external partners.
Support group leads, project leads and project managers in identifying and managing delivery risks, bottlenecks and dependencies, and in resolving stakeholder, partner and reputational issues.
Ensure that project learning is captured and used to improve future work design and delivery.
Represent Climate Analytics externally in the team’s areas of expertise – in scientific conferences, policy forums, donor meetings, media engagements and high-level events.
Strengthen Climate Analytics’ visibility and influence in adaptation, loss and damage, climate risk and related economic analysis.
Contribute substantively to international scientific and policy processes, including IPCC (including AR7), UNFCCC, the Global Goal on Adaptation, the Warsaw International Mechanism and related adaptation, and loss and damage processes.
Build and maintain strong relationships with scientific networks, country partners, international organisations, civil society, funders and other stakeholders, including peer think tanks and academic institutions.
Strengthen Climate Analytics’ partnerships with regional scientific institutions and stakeholders in vulnerable countries, ensuring science is co-developed and useful in their contexts.
Support senior leadership in positioning Climate Analytics on major external debates related to climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage and overshoot.
Lead and manage the team, including line management, mentorship and professional development of group leads and senior staff.
Foster a high-performing, inclusive and intellectually ambitious team culture that values scientific excellence, clarity, collaboration and accountability.
Set clear expectations for quality, delivery, publication, fundraising, teamwork and external engagement.
Recruit, develop and retain outstanding scientists at all levels; support group leads in workload management, recruitment, onboarding, performance management and staff development.
Identify priority technical profiles and recruitment needs aligned with the team’s strategy and funding pipeline.
Foster a respectful, inclusive culture with zero tolerance for harassment, discrimination or abuse of authority; ensure accountability for team performance against organisational standards, gender parity and diversity objectives.
Ensure compliance with organisational policies and procedures, including leave, travel, working time, overtime and timesheet processes.

Requirements

PhD or equivalent research experience in climate science, climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage, resilience, climate risk, climate economics, environmental science, development studies, geography, public policy or a related field.
At least 10 years of relevant professional experience beyond PhD or equivalent senior research experience, including substantial scientific and team leadership.
Strong publication record and recognised scientific credibility in one or more of the team’s core areas.
Demonstrated experience leading scientific or interdisciplinary teams, including line management, mentoring and performance management.
Strong scientific networks across academia, research institutes, international organisations and policy communities, including in regions beyond Europe.
Proven ability to set strategic research agendas and translate them into high-quality outputs, projects and partnerships.
Proven thought leadership in climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage, vulnerability, risk assessment and/or climate economics.
Demonstrated ability to work at the science-policy interface and communicate complex analysis to non-technical audiences.
Track record of developing proposals, building partnerships and securing research grants, ideally including multi-year, multi-million Euro grants from competitive sources.
Strong project and portfolio oversight skills, including the ability to manage risks, priorities and competing demands.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to work across disciplines, teams, cultures and geographies.
Willingness to travel internationally.

Skills

Climate science
Climate impacts
Adaptation
Loss and damage
Resilience
Climate risk
Climate economics
Environmental science
Development studies
Geography
Public policy
Scientific leadership
Team leadership
Publication record
Scientific credibility
Interdisciplinary team leadership
Line management
Mentoring
Performance management
Scientific networks
Strategic research agendas
High-quality outputs
Project development
Partnership building
Thought leadership
Science-policy interface
Complex analysis communication
Proposal development
Grant securing
Project oversight
Portfolio oversight
Risk management
Priority management
Competing demands management
Written communication
Verbal communication
Interpersonal skills
Cross-disciplinary work
Cross-team work
Cross-cultural work
Cross-geographical work
IPCC engagement
UNFCCC engagement
Adaptation finance
Loss and damage finance
Economic assessment of climate impacts
Risk modelling
Decision-support tools development
Applied research products development
Guidance development
Policy-relevant analytical frameworks development
PhD supervision
Academic affiliations
French language
Spanish language
Portuguese language

Location

Berlin, Germany

Work Type

Hybrid office policy
Flexible start time

Experience Level

Senior scientist
Strategic leader
At least 10 years of relevant professional experience beyond PhD or equivalent senior research experience

Education Level

PhD or equivalent research experience

Salary/Compensations

Between EUR 103,781 and EUR 114,418 gross annually

Benefits

Fully funded Germany-wide public transport ticket
40 € monthly company contribution to Urban Sports Club membership
Online mental health and wellbeing platform
Free German language classes
Bike rental discount
Optional company pension plan

About the Company

Climate Analytics is a global climate science and policy institute established in 2008 that delivers cutting-edge science, analysis and support to accelerate climate action and keep global warming below 1.5°C.
Our international team is composed of roughly 170 staff.
Half are based at our headquarters in Berlin, Germany, and the remainder work out of our five regional offices in Africa, Australia & Pacific, the Caribbean, South Asia and North America.

Equal Opportunity

We are a diverse and inclusive team and welcome your application regardless of your gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, disability status, citizenship, or any other aspect that makes you unique.