Head of AI and Data

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Takachar is focused on transforming loose, wet, and bulky crop and forest residues into valuable, carbon-negative bioproducts for rural communities. By deploying small-scale, low-cost, portable systems on tractors and pickup trucks, Takachar upgrades biomass on-site into products such as fertilizer blends, biofuels, and chemicals without external energy inputs. This approach reduces open-air burning, mitigates air pollution and wildfire risk, and supports environmental justice.

Takachar’s mission is to enable self-sufficient rural communities that are less dependent on unstable global supply chains for essential chemical commodities. In doing so, the company helps create localized jobs and sustainable economic opportunities in hard-to-access regions.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We run a fleet of distributed pyrolysis reactors that turn agricultural and forestry residue into biochar, and we convert that into verified carbon removal credits. Every credit we issue rests on a chain of evidence that starts at a sensor on a reactor in a village and ends in a monitoring report an auditor signs off on. This role owns that entire chain.

You will own three areas: the data and telemetry platform, the AI and analytics work that sits on top of it, and the carbon credits function that turns it all into issued credits. You will also help our clients do the same for their own projects. The bet behind this role is that these three things are actually one problem, and that whoever holds all of it can build a data-informed software service that is faster, cheaper, and more powerful than anyone else in biochar.

This is a leadership role with a junior data scientist under it — and it is a hands-on role. You will write code, read methodologies line by line, and sit in audit calls. If you want to stop building, this is the wrong job.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Data & Telemetry Platform • Own the end-to-end data infrastructure: from IoT telemetry on distributed reactors, field apps, forms, lab reports and APIs, through ingestion and processing, to analytics and reporting.
• Design and operate cloud-based infrastructure for IoT telemetry, real-time data processing, warehousing, and operational dashboards serving field teams and partners.
• Make the system auditable by construction: transparent, reproducible, tamper-evident data trails that hold up to third-party verification, not audit trails bolted on afterwards.
• Own data governance, integrity, security and access control, including multi-tenant access where customers see only their own sites.
• Keep it usable for the people who actually feed it — field operators, plant staff, farmers and partners with varying technical comfort.
• AI, Analytics & Reactor Optimization • Build the analytics layer that turns raw reactor telemetry into operational insight: yield, conversion efficiency, process stability, anomaly and fault detection, downtime drivers.
• Apply ML and AI to reactor optimization — process parameter tuning, soft sensors, predictive maintenance, guiding operators toward better runs.
• Feed reactor data analysis back into product development, so the next generation of reactors is designed against evidence rather than intuition.
• Apply AI and automation to accelerate registry compliance workflows — from documentation to verification — with a focus on speed and accuracy over manual processes.
• Carbon Credits Digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) • Own dMRV end to end for our projects: monitoring plans, field and lab data collection protocols, monitoring reports, verification audits carried through to issuance.
• Own compliance and listings across major voluntary carbon standards. Maintain deep knowledge of registry methodologies, submission requirements, and regulatory evolution.
• Read methodologies closely, build the documentation that satisfies them, submit it, and answer auditor questions directly.
• Hold the technical line on biochar-specific MRV: biomass characterization, pyrolysis process monitoring, carbon content quantification, permanence tracking, and the analytical chemistry (elemental, proximate, heavy metals) that underpins it.
• Stay ahead of methodology revisions, registry rule changes, and Article 6 / voluntary-market developments, and translate them into changes in how we build and operate.
• dMRV Product & Hardware Innovation • Develop scalable MRV protocols and measurement strategies for distributed production assets in remote locations, ensuring rigor and auditability at scale.
• Build software tooling for MRV — internal and, where it makes sense, customer-facing.
• Work with the product team on hardware and instrumentation innovation for measurement: what gets sensed, how it is verified, and how measurement error is bounded and defended.
• Client Enablement • Act as the senior technical voice in customer conversations alongside business development.
• Leadership & Cross-Functional Decision-Making • Lead and grow a team spanning MRV operations, data engineering, data analysis and field engineering. Hire, set standards, and raise the technical bar.
• Sit with product development, business development and operations on decisions that determine what we build, what we can credibly claim, and what we can sell.
• Translate between worlds fluently: registry rules to engineers, sensor limitations to auditors, technical risk to leadership and buyers.