(Senior) Researcher and Project Manager Life Cycle Assessment in Agri-Food Chains

Are you an experienced researcher with a track record in supporting public and private sector clients in sustainability measurement and LCA? Would you like to support businesses, policymakers and NGOs in measuring negative impacts of (agri-food) products, and designing pathways to reduce those?

We are looking for an experienced colleague with a market- and customer-oriented attitude and a great affinity for applied scientific research. A track record in executing life cycle assessments is a must. You should have excellent project management skills in that field.

Your most important activities in this function will be:

• Developing, improving and harmonising methods and tools to measure environmental impacts in projects in which clients are supported with recommendations on how to best improve their sustainability achievements;
• Leading and working in project teams that vary in size and complexity. These may vary from about five colleagues at Wageningen Economic Research to larger teams consisting of researchers from different organisations and subcontractors. These could be from WUR divisions, such as Wageningen Plant or Livestock Research, but also international consortia;
• Maintaining regular contact with your clients, whereby you proactively manage the relation to ensure that recommendations are relevant and actionable, whilst being evidence-based. Clients include private and public sector parties as well as NGOs;
• Leading the acquisition of new applied research projects based on your active network in agricultural development and sustainable value chains settings.

You will be working in the expertise group Sustainable Value Chains, one of ten expertise groups at Wageningen Economic Research. The Sustainable Value Chains group is committed to contributing to more sustainable value chains by doing applied socio-economic research for food businesses, governments and NGOs. The group comprises of a multidisciplinary and multinational team of value chain and (environmental, and social) sustainability experts. The group is specialised in true cost accounting, developing new and fair business models, and market, and competitiveness research on various agricultural value chains (e.g. livestock, horticulture and floriculture) .

To strengthen our team, we ask you to have:

• a Master’s degree with a strong emphasis on sustainability (e.g. industrial ecology, environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, sustainable energy);
• 6+ years of (applied) research experience, of which a minimum of 3 years of project management experience;
• extensive knowledge of sustainability measurements and LCA methods (e.g. PEF), life cycle inventory databases (e.g., ecoinvent, agri-footprint), emission models (e.g. IPCC, EMEP/EEA) and tools (e.g. Simapro);
• excellent spoken and written communication skills in English and Dutch, including experience in presenting and publishing research results in reports for public and private sector clients and NGOs; experience in preparing dashboards for clients or a publication record in refereed academic journals is considered a plus;
• knowledge of the agri-food sector is considered a plus;
• experience in various programming languages (e.g. Python) to develop methods, models and tools is considered a plus.

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement include:

• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
• the option to accrue additional holiday hours by working more, up to 40 hours per week;
• sabbatical leave, study leave, and paid parental leave;
• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent pension scheme.
• ability to work from home for up to 50%

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will of course receive a good salary. We offer, depending on your experience, a competitive gross salary of between €3693 and €5737 for a contract with a working week of 36 hours, in accordance with the CLA Wageningen Research (scale 11 or 12 depending on experience). Additionally, a fulltime contract can be discussed.

Wageningen University & Research encourages internal advancement opportunities and mobility with an internal recruitment policy. There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a multi-faceted position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.

The mission of Wageningen University & Research is “To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Under the banner Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen University and the specialised research institutes of the Wageningen Research Foundation have joined forces in contributing to finding solutions to important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment. With its roughly 30 branches, 7,600 employees (6,700 fte) and 13,100 students and over 150,000 participants to WUR’s Life Long Learning, Wageningen University & Research is one of the leading organisations in its domain. The unique Wageningen approach lies in its integrated approach to issues and the collaboration between different disciplines.

Read the 5 reasons why your future colleagues enjoy working at WUR and watch the video below to get an idea of our green campus!

We will recruit for the vacancy ourselves, so no employment agencies please. However, sharing in your network is appreciated.