GM
Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination
Contract type
Freelance
Work mode
Remote · Europe
Experience
Senior · 8+ years
Job description
Independent consultancy serving as Technical Coordinator for the Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA), facilitating and project managing the technical planning of a shared open energy data infrastructure across five member organizations during a 12-month foundational phase.
At a glance
- Employment
- Contract · Independent contractor
- Work mode
- Remote · Europe
- Languages
- English – fluent
- Pay
- USD 135,000 / year
- Apply before
- November 11, 2026
What you'll do
- Facilitate the planning process with all five ORA members, preparing agendas and materials, guiding discussions, building consensus, and documenting decisions and next steps
- Interview the data leads at each member organization to assess data assets, systems, workflows, and priority user needs
- Facilitate a shared definition of the platform's priority users and the access patterns, tools, and guarantees each needs
- Lead members through review of, and decisions on, proposed shared protocols, architecture options, and data hub scope
- Develop and manage an integrated workplan for the foundational phase, with milestones, dependencies, and responsibilities across the five member organizations
- Track progress, risks, decisions, and action items
- Coordinate with the ORA Secretariat on communication with members and ORA leads
- Coordinate with GEM on the data hub proof of concept, defining its requirements with the members
- Develop a centralized map of the datasets, scrapers, and in-house data held across the five members, and identify gaps and opportunities for greater interoperability
- Develop proposed common schemas, identifiers, and metadata documentation, including a framework for a jointly governed identifier crosswalk
- Guide the members to develop shared approaches to automated validation and open, machine-readable documentation
- Analyze and recommend a design for the data platform (hosted, federated, or hybrid), ensuring datasets are clearly versioned and provenance is traced to primary sources
- Work with GEM's Chief Data Officer on a strategy for presenting the consortium's trusted datasets to AI systems and a structured learning exchange on AI-assisted research methods
- Scope and define requirements for a limited proof of concept and assess the prototype built by data engineering contractors under GEM's direction
- Co-author the consortium plan with the five members and prepare an implementation-ready technical and governance roadmap for the next phase
- Produce deliverables including inception report and integrated work plan, assessment report, cross-member data map and gap analysis, agreed priority audiences and use cases, draft shared approaches to metadata/identifiers/validation/documentation, options paper on platform architecture, architecture recommendation and draft shared data protocols, proof of concept requirements, final consortium pla
What we're looking for
- A minimum of 8 years of working experience in data architecture, data management, or data product development, preferably in climate and energy data
- Demonstrated experience facilitating and managing technical projects or working groups across multiple organizations in English
Nice to have
- Strong facilitation skills and experience building consensus among organizations with different practices and priorities
- Demonstrated experience designing or implementing data integration and interoperability, such as common schemas, identifiers or entity resolution, metadata standards, and data documentation
- Knowledge of the open energy data ecosystem, including open datasets, open-source energy modeling tools, and reproducible data pipelines
- Experience with platform architecture choices (hosted, federated, and hybrid), versioned data releases, and APIs
- Understanding of how AI systems consume data, including machine-readable metadata, APIs, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers
- Experience working with open-source, open-data, digital public goods, research, or mission-driven organizations, including governance, licensing, and data stewardship
- Based in Europe, to support time zone overlap with consortium members
Your team
Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) Secretariat
A shared governance structure and Secretariat currently housed at GEM, working to build an open energy intelligence system based on trusted data, open-source tools, and collaborative analysis.
How to get hired
- 1Submit CV and cover letter through GEM's Careers Page
- 2Provide one or two examples of relevant work
- 3Provide proposed hourly or daily rate in US dollars
- 4References may be requested from shortlisted candidates
- 5Evaluation committee evaluates applications based on preferred skills and experience and availability
- 6GEM may request clarification, conduct interviews with shortlisted candidates, negotiate final scope and terms, or decline to make an award
Apply
About Global Energy Monitor
Key facts
- Current host of the ORA Consortium and contracting party for this consultancy
- GEM's Chief Data Officer is the primary technical and contract contact
- GEM will manage the build of the data hub proof of concept
Partners & customers
Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)EmberOpen Energy Transition (OET)TransitionZero
