Organization: Open Earth Foundation

Project: NEST (Nested Energy System Transitions)

Location: Remote (overlap with CET and US Pacific hours required)

Type: Full-time, grant-funded (3-year term, renewable)

Compensation: $75k - $115k

Reports to: PI / Executive Director

Start date: As soon as possible

Application deadline: September 10

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About Open Earth Foundation

Open Earth Foundation (OEF) is a non-profit research and development organization building open digital infrastructure for planetary stewardship. We develop open digital infrastructure, AI systems, and data platforms that strengthen multi-stakeholder coordination and accelerate environmental protection, climate action, and Earth-system resilience.

Our work spans local to planetary scales. Our flagship platform, CityCatalyst, helps governments and city networks accelerate climate action—from greenhouse-gas inventories and climate-risk assessment to AI-assisted prioritization of high-impact actions and finance-ready project preparation—translating complex science into practical decision support. We also develop OpenClimate for nested climate accounting and advance frontier research in AI, energy systems, climate science, and open-source technology.

About NEST

NEST (Nested Energy System Transitions) is a three-year research programme supported by Schmidt Sciences. NEST builds an AI-powered coupling scaffold that links energy models across scales — from national energy system optimization to city-level building stock simulation — to produce coherent, multi-scale transition pathways.

The project is led by OEF in partnership with IIASA (Vienna), Central European University (Vienna), Imperial College London, and the Active Inference Institute. It involves cross-institutional research across four workstreams, with a technical team spanning AI research, energy modelling, policy analysis, and Bayesian inference.

The Role

We are looking for an Energy Systems & AI Research Lead to serve as the scientific integrator and programme manager for the NEST consortium. You will serve as the primary energy-systems subject-matter expert within the Open Earth NEST team, while coordinating research across partner institutions—including IIASA, CEU, Imperial College London, the Active Inference Institute and more—to ensure the consortium delivers coherent, scientifically rigorous outcomes and achieves its research milestones.

Your role is to ensure the energy science underlying NEST is rigorous, integrated, and relevant for real-world energy-transition decisions. You will shape cross-scale modelling methodologies, connect work across disciplines, and translate between AI researchers, energy modellers, and policy experts.

This role combines scientific leadership with programme management. You will coordinate meetings, maintain the project roadmap, track milestones and deliverables, follow up on action items, manage dependencies across workstreams, and ensure effective collaboration across a distributed international consortium. Because NEST is deliberately AI-native, these activities are supported by AI-native tooling that minimizes administrative overhead, allowing you to focus on scientific integration, methodology development, and enabling research breakthroughs across institutions.

Responsibilities

Scientific Integration & Research Leadership

Lead the scientific integration of NEST — ensuring the national, urban, and system-dynamics models cohere into one scientifically sound, multi-scale framework

Own energy-systems methodology and the scientific framing of cross-scale coupling; advance cross-scale modelling methodologies

Provide research leadership in energy-transition modelling; guide research planning, validation, and publications

Translate between disciplines — energy modellers, AI researchers, Bayesian-inference researchers, and policy analysts — so the science connects end to end

Consortium Research Coordination

Coordinate and keep the consortium aligned across OEF, IIASA, CEU, Imperial College London, and the Active Inference Institute around shared scientific goals, methodologies, milestones, and deliverables.

Coordinate scientific collaboration: joint methodology, boundary-variable alignment, and validation against published benchmarks and real-world data

Organize workshops and reviews, typically alongside major climate events — and interface with Schmidt Sciences on scientific milestones

Support pilot engagement and scientific validation with C40, ICLEI, and SCAC

Requirements

Must have:

Master's or PhD in energy systems, energy engineering, or a closely related field — a recognized energy-systems researcher

Deep expertise in energy systems across national, urban, and system-dynamics scales. Postdoctoral research experience is strongly preferred.

Demonstrated experience integrating or leading research across multiple institutions and disciplines

A track record of scientific coordination: translating between disciplines and aligning collaborators toward shared scientific results

Fluency with AI-native productivity and coordination tooling.

Strong written and verbal communication skills in English

Comfort working in a technical and AI-driven environment—you don't need to write production code, but you should be able to follow technical discussions, understand modelling approaches, and engage meaningfully with the codebase.

Strong preference:

Experience with AI/ML research programmes or deep-tech R&D

Familiarity with academic-industry collaboration dynamics

Experience coordinating international research partnerships (Europe + Americas)

Experience with grant-funded research programmes (scientific reporting and milestone reviews)

Nice to have:

Familiarity with the IPCC, UNFCCC, or urban climate action networks (C40, ICLEI)

Familiarity with energy-modelling tools (MESSAGEix, building-stock models, or similar)

Working understanding of research-adapted Agile/Scrum and open-source collaboration practices

What We Offer

Scientific leadership of a high-profile international research programme at the frontier of AI and climate science

A mission-driven, remote-first organization with a collaborative culture

Competitive compensation commensurate with experience

The opportunity to shape the scientific-integration culture of a new programme from day one