Transformative Technology LeadCXL is hiring a Transformative Technology Lead for the South America Fire Fund. This Senior Program Officer will drive the technology-first agenda of the South America Fire Fund (SAFF), a venture fund working to keep fire from tipping the Amazon, Pantanal, and Chiquitania past the point of no return from a rainforest to a degraded grassland. The Senior Program Officer is the person who identifies, sources, evaluates, and helps apply transformative technologies, stands up the data systems that tie the program together and unlocks conservation finance. You will monitor our impact or failure and translate between technology partners and the teams and brigades on the ground, while also turning strategy into things that actually happen: managing the grants, contracts, and deliverables that keep it all on track. You will report to the CXL CEO (the Fund Lead), working closely under the guidance of the Deputy Fund Lead and Head of Fire and Amazon Programs, and in close coordination with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation, who leads last-mile application at the community level. Our mission is to prevent an impending sixth mass extinction – the first in Earth's history driven by the actions of a single species: ours. Unlike traditional conservation efforts, Conservation X Labs focuses on leveraging the best technology, the newest innovation, interdisciplinary genius, and the power of the marketplace to boldly confront the biggest problems facing the planet. Though humans have driven this sixth extinction, we know humans have the power to reverse it. Conservation X Labs (CXL) seeks to solve the world's greatest conservation problems by supporting innovative solutions that address the underlying drivers of extinction. We create transformative new technologies for biodiversity conservation, and to address drivers of species loss, lead innovation competitions, and empower talented innovators across disciplines to create game changing innovations that serve people and our planet. CXL is the operational lead for the South America Fire Fund (SAFF), a new fund tackling fire, the leading cause of tropical primary forest loss, across three of South America's most globally significant ecoregions: the Amazon, the Pantanal, and the Chiquitania. It is an experiment at the scale of the Amazon Basin. The Fund brings together an extraordinarily diverse coalition of local, regional, and international partners to build and test integrated fire prevention, detection, and response systems, creating the evidence base for scaling how to prevent the Amazon from tipping. Interventions span community-led stewardship, technology and innovation, behavior change, accelerated ecological restoration, and financial mechanisms that incentivize fire-safe land management. Technology underlies all these programs. You come at this as a technology person first. You have deep expertise in emerging technology, AI, sensor platforms, big data; you can see where things are heading, and you can spot a true leapfrog from an incremental step. You want to help solve one of the hardest ecological problems out there - keeping fire from tipping the Amazon, Pantanal, and Chiquitania past the point of no return, to a degraded grassland. You recognize that the biggest risk to the most consequential environmental problems is inaction. You are the person who turns strategy into things that actually happen. You own the day-to-day: the grants, the contracts, the deadlines, the deliverables, and you get satisfaction from a program that moves on schedule and shows real results in the field. You are highly organized and detail-oriented, and you can hold several grants, workstreams, partners, and deadlines in your head at once without dropping anything, working well without close supervision and under pressure. You are comfortable in the field and at the desk. You can help train a brigade on drones for fire mapping one week and prepare a funder briefing the next, and you can translate between technical detail and the people who need to act on it. You are a strong coordinator across cultures and disciplines, at ease keeping communities, brigades, Indigenous-led organizations, external consultants, and regional partners across Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru in sync, and flagging problems early rather than late. You are comfortable working in English; Spanish or Portuguese is a significant plus given the regional context, but it is not the core requirement for this role. You are a creative, forward-thinking problem-solver who stays steady in complex, multi-partner environments and takes corrective action when things drift off course. You are a translator. You can sit between major technology partners such as Google, startups, and hardware, sensor, and data providers on one side and a field program on the other, and make each side legible to the other. You think like a product manager and may be experienced as one too. You are comfortable owning technology and data systems from evaluation through deployment, and coordinating with the last-mile technology lead so together you cover the full arc from leapfrog innovation to community application. You are energized by the CXL mission to end extinction, and you want to spend this part of your career on a hard problem that matters. You are brilliant, hard working, self-motivated, iconoclastic, risk taking, team-oriented, and kind. The Transformative Technology Lead (Senior Program Manager) oversees day-to-day programmatic implementation of the Technology Strategy across the Fund's three target ecoregions: the Amazon, the Pantanal, and the Chiquitania. Reporting directly to the CXL CEO (the Fund Lead) and working closely with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation and with CXL's Director of Open Innovation, this role drives a technology-first agenda by managing grants, contracts, and program management; assisting with maintaining partner relationships; supporting field technology deployments and partner trainings; and organizing and implementing open innovation programs that advance fire prevention and response across South America. The Senior Program Manager works on a daily basis with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation to execute strategic priorities, prepare materials for funders and partners, and ensure activities are delivered on time and with measurable impact. The role coordinates with external consultants (including trainers, technical advisers, and field specialists) and ensures seamless collaboration between team members, technical partners, and regional actors, including communities and brigades. In line with the Fund's technology priorities, this role champions leapfrogging technologies and the evaluation and adoption of innovative solutions, and serves as the Fund's technical translator with major technology partners and technology providers. It also leads the Fund's data systems and data-flow work (Pillar 3 of the Technology Strategy) with the Regional Lead for Technology. Manage the execution and day-to-day operations of the SAFF Technology strategy together with the Regional Lead for Technology to ensure that the technology strategy translates into impact in the field, and support the larger SAFF strategy and experimental design with the Deputy Fund Lead and the Program Operations Director. The Transformative Technology Lead will also help develop and execute open innovation competitions under the guidance of the Fund Lead, the Deputy Fund Lead, and Open Innovation Director. With the Regional Lead, Transformative Technology Lead will build and leverage productive partnerships, support procurement efforts, serve as a product manager for technology, and identify and develop opportunities, including supporting additional funding opportunities. Programmatic Management (70%)Scan the landscape for breakthrough innovations that can transform our ability to prevent the Amazon from tipping, connect with emerging innovators and companies, and evaluate the best of these ideas for deployment. Identify and articulate gaps in current fire prevention and mitigation solutions where an open innovation approach will have the greatest impact. Ensure that the Technology Strategy components and activities are executed in a timely and effective manner that furthers the Fund's goals and objectives. Support, develop, and administer grants and contracts, tracking deadlines, budgets, and partner activities, with the larger SAFF operations team. Track and manage the Technology Strategy workflow with project management techniques and systems such as Airtable, ensuring deadlines and deliverables stay on course or adapt as the team learns from on the ground implementation. Serve as the technical lead and translator between the Fund and major technology partners and technology providers, evaluating and championing leapfrog innovations that can be deployed within the Fund's timeframe. Lead the Fund's data systems and data-flow strategy (Pillar 3 of the Technology Strategy), including coordinating any partner-built underlying data infrastructure and ensuring systems connect, are useful and usable, and sustainable and scalable. Source & test mature, deployable technologies through focused, fast-moving mechanisms such as targeted RFPs, alongside open innovation programs. Apply product management practices across technology development, from evaluation and selection through field deployment. Collaborate with the Fund's other technical teams, including Financial Innovation, Behavior Change, Cross-Border Collaboration, and Accelerated Restoration. Work with the Monitoring & Evaluation team to develop and implement impact tracking plans for the Technology Strategy that support the Fund's experimental design. Collaborate with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation in field operations, including grantee support and training brigades in key technologies such as drones for fire mapping. Collaborate with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation, in preparing strategic documents, briefings, partner updates, and internal reports that track progress and inform decision-making. Collaborate with the Regional Lead for Technology, Data, and Innovation in developing and managing the brigade technology support strategy,
