LEAD AGRONOMIST – USA

About Us:

Does your profession need a purpose? We are looking for a passionate and driven Agronomist to join our Global and Growing organization in California Carlsbad office. Anaergia is a global leader in the production of clean energy, fertilizer, and recycled water from virtually any waste stream, offering the widest range of maximizing resource recovery solutions for the municipal, industrial, commercial, and agricultural markets. Anaergia delivers integrated solutions globally through established offices in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia and its breakthrough technologies are in use at over a thousand resource recovery facilities worldwide, reducing greenhouse gas emissions while creating new revenue sources for its clients. Our sustainable solutions for the generation of renewable energy while recovering value from waste are on the front line of solving climate change.

If you feel that your personal goals align with our Company’s Mission of making a difference in the world – here is an excellent opportunity for motivated and driven professional to be part of our growing operations in California, USA. Join us!

Mission: 

This role supports the commercialization of fertilizers recovered from Bioenergy Facilities located throughout California and the Western US. The successful candidate will also support R&D, field trials and customer adoption of the newly developed agronomic products recovered from biosolids and organic waste.

Goals:

• Develop new markets for nutrients recovered from municipal biosolids and organic waste striving to achieve top of the market for quality, value, and price.
• Foster long-term relationships with stakeholders to ensure that recovered nutrients are ready for market.

Key Responsibilities Include:

The Agronomist’s responsibilities includes –

• Interface closely with farmers, fertilizer producers/distributors and local vendors to better understand the existing knowledge of biochar, food waste digestate solids and to create demand for these products.
• Conduct field growth trials to study the impact of biochar and food waste digestate solids addition to soils, including the impact on crop yield and microbial communities, along with identification of possible sources of toxicity in these products.
• Understand the legislative requirements of land application of biochar and food waste digestate solids from both farming and retail agricultural standpoints.
• Secure the local legislative requirements for land application of the produced products and market the products to the top of market based on quality and value.
• Characterize and prove that produced biochar meets Canadian Food Inspection Agencies (CFIA) and United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements for land application, with special focus on heavy metal, dioxins/furan, PAH and PFA concentrations.
• Develop a market for biochar, food waste digestate solids and ammonium sulfate to transform the material from a low-value product into a desirable commodity.
• Act as the Product Manager (Recovered Nutrients), work with Process Researchers within the R&D department to continuously improve the nutrient recovery process, focusing on farmer and customer requirements, and write standard operating procedures for the analysis of biochar, food waste digestate solids, soil and leaf tissue.
• Build and nurture strong relationships with farmers, suppliers, and end-users.
• Perform economic analysis for each project to understand the net value of biochar re-sale, considering transport and disposal costs.
• Provide agronomic and product positioning feedback to sales teams.
• Developing a market for ammonium sulfate to transform the material from a low-value product into a desirable commodity.
• Work with the R&D group to create test plans for field growth trials to understand the impact of biochar and food waste digestate solids addition to soils.
• Active participation in field growth trials, either through active participation in the trial or overseeing the work of another researcher.
• Review and interpretation of all collected data, including interfacing with 3rd party labs.
• Close interaction with horticulturist, agronomist and farmers to gather feedback on how field growth trials are progressing.
• Marketing content creation support.
• Provide expert advice on crops nutrition, field trials and product recommendations.

Knowledge and Requirements:

• Holds a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in: Agricultural science / Agronomy / Agriculture Business or a related field
• Matured experience for at least 5 years as an Agronomist, Agricultural Engineer, Certified Crop Advisor or similar
• Proven leader having experience developing a market for a bio-based fertilizer
• Accomplished communicator with proven success in building positive customer relationships.
• Technical understanding of wastewater, biogas, anaerobic digestion and/or municipal solid waste.
• Experience in digital Agronomy tools
• Expert understanding of all MS Office tools and ability to adapt to new digital tools
• The Agronomist has the following Key Personal Attributes –
• Excellent leadership, communication, networking and interpersonal skills
• Passionate, highly driven and hard-working, portrays an Entrepreneurial spirit, a great team player and gets things done. Inquisitive, solutions oriented. “Can do” attitude
• Always reading on new technologies, technically deep and detail oriented.
• Team player, humble. Meets promises internally and to external clients and project stakeholders and participants.
• Self-starter; ability to seize opportunities and move projects forward with minimal direction.
• Effective problem-solving skills.
• Aligned and motivated by our company Mission.

Reports to:

Managing Director, West USA (Regional) and Global Director – Technology Development & Product Management (Functional)

Location:

Based in Carlsbad, California, USA; US Work authorization required.

How to apply:

To apply for this position, indicate: “Lead Agronomist” in the subject line. Submit your resume by e-mail in electronic format (.pdf or .doc) to careers@anaergia.com