Volunteer Advisor – Data Engineer for Climate Tech & Open Data

About the role

If you are deeply concerned about climate change and the ongoing destruction of the environment, and you’re excited by the opportunity to contribute your expertise to a meaningful solution, this role could be a strong fit.

Who we are

Climate Accountability API is a Berlin-based climate tech nonprofit focused on building tools that make corporate environmental impact more transparent and understandable. We are among the leading providers of real-time data on global warming and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, serving around 80,000 software applications at no cost.

We recently won the national competition for the E.ON Foundation’s European Climate Fund, securing a €10,000 prize. These funds are supporting the development of our prototype: a suite of software tools designed to help the public understand the environmental impact of companies operating in the European Union and worldwide. Our goal is to help shift attention and resources away from carbon-intensive businesses and toward greener alternatives, accelerating the transition to a more sustainable future.

We are looking for a volunteer advisor with experience in data engineering to support the development of an open, collaborative ESG data platform.

What you’ll do

• Advise on the design and architecture of scalable ESG data ingestion pipelines (web scraping, APIs, corporate filings, open datasets, news feeds).
• Provide guidance on parsing, extraction, and transformation strategies for semi-structured sources (HTML, PDF, JSON), including schema design and normalization approaches.
• Recommend data modeling and storage patterns (relational, NoSQL, data lake/warehouse) for ESG metrics, time-series measurements, and provenance tracking.
• Review and advise on data quality, validation rules, monitoring, lineage, and reproducibility practices.
• Counsel on infrastructure choices and infrastructure-as-code patterns (e.g., Terraform/HCL) and cost‑effective deployment strategies.
• Support integration requirements for downstream AI/LLM workflows (RAG retrieval design, indexing, embedding strategies) to ensure data usability for models.
• Suggest tooling and automation approaches (CI/CD for pipelines, workflow schedulers such as Airflow/Prefect, containerization, scripting standards).
• Review technical documentation, repository structure, and version-control practices (Git workflows).
• Provide occasional hands‑on review of code, architecture diagrams, and technical proposals; mentor the core team on best practices when requested.
• Familiarity with JavaScript and CMS such as Directus is a plus.
• Familiarity with Digital Ocean cloud infrastructure is a plus.

What we’re looking for

• Demonstrable experience in data engineering, data pipelines, or backend data systems with an advisory mindset.
• Strong proficiency with Python and common data tooling (parsing libraries, ETL frameworks, data processing libraries).
• Familiarity with web scraping and extraction techniques, PDF/HTML parsing, and approaches to extract structured signals from corporate documents.
• Experience or knowledge of databases (SQL and/or NoSQL), data modeling, and data warehousing concepts.
• Practical understanding of cloud deployments and infrastructure-as-code; experience with lightweight cloud providers is a plus.
• Familiarity with LLM workflows, RAG architectures, or retrieval/indexing systems is a plus.
• Awareness of data protection (GDPR) and confidentiality requirements when handling personal or sensitive data.
• Interest in climate, sustainability, or ESG topics and alignment with the organization’s mission.
• Curiosity, initiative, and ability to coordinate flexibly with a small, volunteer-driven team.
• This role is voluntary, coordinated by mutual availability.

What we offer

• EUR 80/month allowance for approved expenses.
• Access to a mission-driven impact community, networking opportunities, and events.
• Close collaboration