The Executive Secretariat for the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market is seeking to appoint an experienced Assurance professional to manage the delivery of our new Assessment workstream. The successful candidate will work closely with the Head of Assurance to manage the assessment of carbon crediting programmes against our forthcoming Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) and Assessment Framework, and provide assurance over the issuance of our CCP labels to the market. 

To succeed you will be a pragmatic, results-focused professional and able to operate independently. You will have a background in Assurance, and experience in assessing programmes, projects or initiatives against benchmark quality standards. You will be a self-starter and comfortable working collaboratively with partners and colleagues across multiple time zones and country contexts, and possess strong client and stakeholder relationship skills. As part of a small and dynamic team, you will also need to be flexible and willing to support the wider activities of the Integrity Council as required. 

 There is considerable opportunity to help shape this role as the Integrity Council grows, and to develop skills across a range of different areas.

This role is available on a full-time or part-time basis.

You can find out more about the Integrity Council on our website: https://icvcm.org

Key duties

• Supporting the design, implementation and evolution of ICVCM’s process for assessing carbon crediting programmes and credit types

• Conducting detailed reviews of programme applications and preparing high quality evaluation reports

• Managing close interactions with applicant programmes, in collaboration with the Head of Assurance and Market Formation team, to raise and resolve any issues identified

• Collaborating with comms team to prepare publication of evaluation reports

• Coordinating with technical team to ensure timely provision of draft papers, research and analysis to support assessment of project types by expert working groups and ICVCM expert panel and board committee.

• Supporting assurance on labelling, including: : walk-through and scrutiny of registry processes to identify relevant credits; sample-based positive and negative confirmation; and liaison with registries to resolve any issues arising

• Supporting the establishment of systems and processes to provide ongoing monitoring and oversight of CCP-labelled credits (including spot-checks and auditing, complaints management, and ongoing dialogue with programmes)

This is an exciting and fast paced role and as the Integrity Council is a start-up, you must be willing to work flexibly and take on additional duties, as required.

 Essential experience

• Demonstrable professional track record of achievement in a relevant field of assessment, assurance, compliance or audit

• Experience proactively monitoring programme/project progress, including appropriate escalations or proactive resolution of issues 

• Experience developing and maintaining effective cross-functional working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders

• Strong track record of producing high quality reports

Desirable Experience

• Experience working in carbon markets

• Experience assessing projects and programmes against sustainability standards

• Experience working in a start-up environment and in a small team.

• Experience working in an international context and/or across multi-agency project teams

• Experience in managing and deploying assurance software platform and tools.

Skills, Abilities & Attributes

• Strong client and/or stakeholder management skills

• Good interpersonal skills & relationship management

• Strong project management and organisation skills - capable of balancing competing priorities to meet deadlines

• Broad knowledge of carbon markets and a keen interest in action to tackle climate change

• Excellent written and oral communication skills

• Strong independent work ethic - ability to flourish and be highly productive in a dynamic and demanding work environment as a member of a high-performing, globally distributed team

• Adaptable and comfortable working in a fast-paced, agile, start-up environment

• Discretion and confidentiality

• Excellent leadership skills and an ability to support the development of less experienced colleagues.

About the Integrity Council

The Integrity Council is an independent governance body for the voluntary carbon market. Its purpose is to ensure the voluntary carbon market accelerates a just transition to 1.5ºC.

 It does this by setting and enforcing definitive global threshold standards, drawing on the best science and expertise available, so high-quality carbon credits channel finance towards genuine and additional greenhouse gas reductions and removals and contribute to climate resilient development.