SCOOP Carbon Accounting Data Engineer and Strategist
Job description summary
- Title: SCOOP Carbon Accounting Data Engineer and Strategist
- Posted: 9/9/26
- Application Deadline: 9/13/26 (or until filled)
- Start Date: 9/14/26 preferred
- How to apply: Use Handshake to upload your Resume or CV, including relevant work and coursework into Handshake, as well as a cover letter and copy of your transcript.
- Questions: Contact Katrina Pugh (katrina.pugh@tufts.edu)
- Compensation: $20-30/hour
- Hours/week: 10-15
- Duration: Fall Semester, 2026 (optional extension into Spring Semester, 2027)
About the SCOOP Carbon Accounting Program
The SCOOP Data Engineer and Strategist role is a great opportunity for somebody who is committed to building and using their practical data skills for the planet.
Sustainable Carbon Options with Open Protocols (SCOOP) is part of the latest Auster Center initiative, Environmental Innovation. Carbon markets are broken as there is currently no single methodology for producing, conveying, and using carbon accounting data. First, many carbon offsets are issued under bespoke processes that lack industry-wide credibility. Second, year-end reporting cadences are far too coarse for actual accounting. Third, investors, regulators, and corporate offset buyers cannot reliably compare projects, restate historical figures, or trace a credit back to its dynamic physical origin. This is the missing infrastructure layer of the climate economy. It is also exactly the kind of problem that the Tufts Auster Center for Applied Innovation and Research exists to support: a technical, transdisciplinary, and translational problem with a clear path from research to deployed practice.
The SCOOP Project is an initiative applying sustainability science, information technology and financial accounting principles in a general liability-and-asset Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Validation (MMRV) accounting framework.
We are engineers, social scientists, economists, and environmentalists, bringing transformations and transparency to open up markets. We serve a range of players, from carbon asset or liability owner, to carbon project rater, to carbon registry owner, to carbon exchange, and a multitude of different local and country policy makers. The goal of SCOOP is to bring together the fragmentation across the carbon supply chain.
SCOOP is primarily a data platform – developing and/or connecting tools that normalize carbon claims and emission against standards, calculate dynamic carbon measures, and enable market participants to peel back the lineage of carbon claims. At the same time, it is also a collaboration problem.
Data Engineer and Strategist Role.
The job of the Data Engineer and Strategist -- in collaboration with the SCOOP Core Model and Impact Network/Ecosystem teams -- is to develop practical, automated data transformations for a small number of pilot projects (e.g., with an AI data center owner, a carbon project owner, a carbon project rater, or a market maker). Inputs to those practical data transformation outputs include, but are not limited to:
- Developing the taxonomy for carbon claims, markets, and actors in service of the SCOOP functionality
- Evaluating and selecting taxonomy/master/metadata management and data movement (ETL) tools.
- Teaching the SCOOP team how to use the select tools.
- Defining the metadata schema for the SCOOP data ecosystem
- Selecting a secure data storage platforms
- Defining technical requirements for SCOOP data processing-- such as mapping, interoperability and data movement / ETL; traceability, lineage tracing, privacy, security, and swift settlements of carbon offsets and renewable energy credits. Longer-term requirements include scenario and risk analysis, e.g., modeling markets and policy impacts in collaboration with policy makers, claimants, emitters, and investors.
Skills for the Data Engineer and Strategist
The skills that this person will require include
- Data engineering and data quality
- Taxonomy, metadata and master data management,
- Data schema development
- Data engineering tools selection and use (such as ETL, and data integration)
- Requirements development
- Project management
Compensation for the Data Engineer and Strategist
Compensation will be commensurate with the student’s or post-doc’s experience and relevant skills.