Director, Data Stewardship

Responsibilities

Under the direction of the Chief Executive Officer and working closely with The Exchange’s programming team and Chief Climate Scientist, the Director of Data Stewardship will undertake the following responsibilities:

• Provide senior-level expertise with a strong focus on technical implementation priorities for the data stewardship initiative.
• Assess the current landscape of public climate data, including data infrastructure and key stakeholders across sectors, and lead the development of innovative and more resilient approaches to preserve and improve access to critical climate datasets.
• Conduct technical assessments of infrastructure needs, risks, and opportunities; assessment and mapping of workflows by key users across sectors; stakeholder coordination; and development of new infrastructure and access methodologies at The Exchange as well as in coordination with external collaborators.
• Identify and collaborate with key stakeholders and users of climate data across academia, government, nonprofits, and the private sector; including coordinating with stakeholders currently engaged in climate data preservation and access to minimize gaps or duplication of efforts.
• Work with other key stakeholders to shape the formation of guiding principles for climate data categorization and prioritization, as well as identifying key experts required to maintain curation and usability of prioritized climate data.
• Oversee the development of a data storage strategy and protocols, including storage managed by The Exchange as well as efforts to coordinate data storage roles/responsibilities across institutions. Leverage storage and access methodologies across cloud and physical storage providers, and with an understanding of emerging technological capabilities including advances in AI.
• Lead the identification and procurement of The Exchange’s owned data storage including capacity and performance needs, pricing structures, long-term partnership models, staffing, and other infrastructure considerations.
• Oversee an effort to define best practices and actionable recommendations for enabling ethical, equitable, and scalable public access to climate data.
• Scope, lead the hiring and/or contracting of, and manage additional technical staff and consultants, including data management and platform development experts. Explore partnership and development arrangements that leverage The Exchange’s network of partners and collaborators, and that prioritize building on existing tools and open-source approaches.
• Work with other program leaders to build relationships across Exchange partners and other relevant stakeholders, collaborating with technical peers and partners on infrastructure and data preservation challenges, to position The Exchange as a global thought leader and go-to resource on climate data issues.
• Work with The Exchange’s Advancement team, fellow program leaders, and partners to identify and pursue fundraising opportunities for data initiatives, including but not limited to providing additional technical expertise and input, as needed.
• Participate in the overall leadership and management of The Exchange as a member of the leadership team.

Skillset

• Significant experience designing, implementing, or operating technical data storage infrastructures, large-scale data systems, and/or HPC/cloud environments.
• Experience overseeing high-performance data transfer, networking, and data access architectures, enabling reliable movement and discovery of large-scale scientific datasets across distributed compute, storage, HPC, and cloud environments, with attention to performance, security, cost efficiency, and user accessibility.
• Master’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., computer science, information science, data science, Earth sciences, public administration or policy) preferred.
• A minimum of 12-15 years of experience completing the above functions in the public interest, ideally with some of this time spent in or working closely with the public sector; and a minimum of 5 years in a leadership position.
• Experience leading technical teams or major infrastructure projects.
• Familiarity with the scientific and data-related dimensions of climate change.
• Experience with data storage options and technologies (such as tape vs. disks vs. SSDs) and their cost-benefit tradeoffs.
• Experience with data organization, formatting, and compression, especially for large-scale datasets.
• Ability to collaborate across program strategy teams while focusing on technical implementation as part of a lean, start-up organization.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, including ability to communicate complex issues to a wide range of audiences.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills with the ability to build, foster, and maintain positive professional relationships with colleagues, organizational partners, and external constituencies.
• Must have the ability to work with people from diverse backgrounds in a culturally responsive manner.
• Must be able to work independently and collaboratively on complex tasks with tight deadlines.
• Commitment to The Exchange Staff Core Competencies.