Head of Methodology and R&D

About Meridia

Meridia is an AgTech company specialised in software solutions for field data within complex agri-commodity supply chains.

Meridia Verify®, a SaaS product, verifies supply chain field data against regulatory and voluntary sustainability frameworks in minutes and provides hands-on guidance for risk mitigation. Procurement and sustainability teams eliminate commercial and reputational risk, prevent supply-chain disruptions, and shift from guesswork to confident, evidence-based decisions.

Our mission is to improve the veracity of datasets that drive decision-making in global agri-commodity supply chains. Our purpose is to build transparent and inclusive supply chains.

See https://www.meridia.land for more information on our work. 

The Role

As Head of Methodology and R&D, you lead the development, governance, and continuous improvement of the methodologies that underpin Meridia’s products and services. You ensure that complex sustainability frameworks, scientific evidence, regulatory requirements, and field realities are translated into clear, practical, auditable, and defensible prescriptions that can be understood and applied by both technical and non-technical audiences.

You will set the strategic direction of Meridia’s methodology and research agenda while remaining hands-on in the development and review of methodologies. You will lead a methodology function, manage direct reports, and build the team’s capabilities over time.

You do not need to have worked directly with every framework, commodity, or regulatory requirement relevant to Meridia. We are looking for someone with strong direct or adjacent expertise and the ability to rapidly build knowledge, assess unfamiliar frameworks, and turn them into robust and operational approaches.

You will collaborate with Product, Engineering, Commercial, and Management teams to ensure that methodological requirements are implemented effectively. Previous experience working directly with a downstream product engine or within a software product team is valuable but not essential.

You will be based in the Netherlands and will work closely with our teams in the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Brazil, as well as our country teams. You will report to the CEO in the Netherlands.

Responsibilities

The Head of Methodology and R&D has the following areas of work and responsibilities:

Methodology Translation and R&D

• Convert regulatory requirements, voluntary frameworks, standards, scientific evidence, and stakeholder expectations into clear methodological rules, decision criteria, procedures, and guidance.
• Produce methodology documentation that is consistent, auditable, implementable, and suitable for both internal and external use.
• Ensure alignment of methodologies with regulatory and industry requirements (e.g. EUDR, DCF, Scope 3 and other voluntary commitment frameworks and standards, legislation)
• Explain complex methodological choices in language that is clear and convincing to non-technical colleagues, customers, suppliers, auditors, and other stakeholders.
• Turn research insights, scientific advances, and field learnings into scalable methodologies, products, and an R&D agenda.

Product and Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Product, Commercial and Management teams to ensure methodologies are embedded correctly into products, and are scalable across profiles, commodities, origins
• Engage with and translate external stakeholder requirements (input from partners, clients, industry experts, and regulatory and voluntary frameworks) into concrete methodology and product decisions
• Make pragmatic methodological decisions that optimise for commercial benefit: finding the right balance between scientific depth and speed of delivery, given the resources at hand
• Translate methodological complexity into clear internal guidance and external documentation that supports customer value propositions
• Ensure feedback from clients, partners, and implementations feeds back into continuous methodological improvement

External Engagement

• Act as Meridia's most senior expert counterpart to partners when aligning on and discussing methodology details, proposals, changes, and results
• Represent and defend Meridia's methodology decisions vis-à-vis customers, particularly their technical and scientific staff
• Bring an established professional network to Meridia, and keep investing in expanding it, plugging into the organisations and individuals that keep Meridia abreast of scientific, regulatory, and industry developments, and that build our credibility in scientifically-minded commercial settings and beyond
• Represent Meridia at technical conferences, expert panels, and industry working groups
• Contribute to publications, whitepapers, toolkits, and guidance materials

Team Leadership and Capability Building

• Lead, manage, and develop Meridia’s methodology team, including direct reports and regular performance, development, and prioritisation conversations.
• Set clear objectives, standards, ownership, and ways of working for methodology and R&D activities.
• Build internal capability in methodology design, framework interpretation, validation, documentation, and communication.
• Recruit, mentor, and retain methodology professionals as the function grows.
• Create an environment in which scientific challenge, peer review, practical judgement, and continuous learning are expected.
• Allocate team capacity across strategic research, customer needs, methodology maintenance, and urgent regulatory or commercial priorities.

Learning and Development

The ideal candidate should be eager and willing to learn and grow in the role. You will be engaged in on-the-job training and development to gain knowledge about agri-commodity supply chains, sustainability regulation, and Meridia's products and methodologies. You will be mentored by our CEO in the Netherlands as well as by technical advisors and senior colleagues across the organisation, with room to grow towards greater strategic ownership over time.

We are looking for an experienced sustainability, environmental, or applied-science leader who can combine subject-matter expertise with strong methodological judgement. The ideal candidate may come directly from agri-commodity supply chains, land-use change, deforestation, or earth observation, but may also come from adjacent fields such as sustainability standards, climate or environmental reporting, responsible sourcing, certification, impact measurement, regulatory implementation, or assurance.

What matters most is the ability to understand complex frameworks and evidence, identify what they require in practice, develop clear and defensible methodologies, and build the additional domain knowledge needed to apply them in Meridia’s operating context.

Required qualifications

• A PhD  or an MSc combined with an equivalent applied research track record in a relevant scientific discipline (e.g. ecology, remote sensing, geospatial or environmental science, agronomy, forestry, or a related quantitative field)
• At least 10 years of combined experience in applied research, methodology development, and scientific leadership in sustainability, land use, deforestation, agri-commodity supply chains, or earth observation
• Demonstrated experience developing, governing, reviewing, or implementing methodologies, frameworks, standards, assessment systems, assurance approaches, or decision rules.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex scientific, regulatory, or sustainability frameworks into clear, practical, auditable, and actionable prescriptions for non-technical users.
• Proven line-management experience, including managing direct reports, setting objectives, providing feedback, supporting development, and making prioritisation or performance decisions.
• Experience acting as senior technical counterpart to external partners, clients, auditors, or regulators, including defending methodological choices under scrutiny
• Pragmatic and decisive, with the ability to balance scientific or methodological rigour, usability, speed, and commercial reality.
• An established professional network across academic institutions, standard-setting bodies, and industry initiatives in sustainability and supply chains and the drive to keep expanding it
• Excellent scientific writing and communication skills in English, with the ability to make complex methodology understandable and convincing for non-expert audiences
• Pragmatic and decisive: able to balance scientific rigour with commercial reality, and comfortable making defensible decisions with imperfect information

Preferred qualifications

• Field experience in tropical commodity-producing landscapes (e.g. West Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America), including designing or commissioning ground-truthing studies
• Domain knowledge of one or more of commodities: cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy, cattle
• Experience in or with organisations bridging science and industry, such as supply-chain transparency initiatives, certification bodies, or environmental data platforms
• Experience applying machine learning and AI techniques to earth observation, crop detection, or land-use classification
• Experience engaging directly in regulatory dialogues or standard-development processes
• Working proficiency in additional languages relevant to our operations (e.g. Portuguese, Spanish, French, Bahasa Indonesia)

The benefits package includes:

• Market rate salary commensurate with your skills and competencies
• Four-day work week
• 7% pension contribution
• A computer or laptop for work
• A hybrid working position, with 2 out of 4 days at the Amsterdam office
• Up to 5 weeks allowance of fully remote working per year
• Annual employee led Learning & Development budget
• Office travel compensation
• Being part of a fast-growing impact venture with an informal, professional work culture
• Engaging with team members, clients and users in various other countries

Apply!

Applications will be processed on a rolling basis. Please apply by submitting your details on Workable: https://apply.workable.com/j/2D32006E46

Only applications submitted through Workable will be reviewed.

The ideal starting date is November 1st. 

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected] for more information about this position.