Finance Innovation Specialist

Job Titles: Finance Innovation Specialist
Team: Capital & Investment

Contract: Fixed term 1 year, with possibility of renewal

Level: Intermediate
Please refer to our Capability Framework
Location: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, UK

Apply by: We're interviewing on a rolling basis until we close the role. We advise you to apply early as we may close the role early if we have a sufficient pool of candidates. 

ABOUT US

At Climate-KIC, we are wholeheartedly committed to building a diverse and representative team and an inclusive workplace that values different life experiences and perspectives, and we encourage personal development, learning and growth.

When recruiting, we look to achieve diversity in the candidate pool. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups and are happy to consider reasonable adjustments that will foster success in potential employees from diverse backgrounds and life situations. And because our team has differing needs and personal circumstances, we offer a high degree of flexibility to accommodate all working patterns. We’re happy to discuss your situation during the interview and see how best we can support you.

Don’t let Imposter Syndrome stop you from applying!

Climate-KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community) is Europe’s foremost climate innovation initiative, entrusted by the European Commission to catalyse transformation through innovation. Headquartered in Amsterdam, with circa 160 people distributed all over the EU, Climate-KIC leads and orchestrates innovation with a community of more than 400. Together we conduct activities in 39 countries. We partner with cities, regions, governments and communities with the highest climate action ambition; providing the framework and expert support to holistically manage the complexity of climate change and deliver accelerated climate action.

Climate-KIC operates as a not-for-profit platform working through public-private partnership, wielding both public and private funding. We consist of 3 Legal entities: a Dutch BV Holding company (for profit) with 14 branches in European jurisdictions, providing grant management, innovation orchestration services, and impact investment advisory owned by a Dutch-based foundation with charity status – Climate-KIC International Foundation. Historically, we have been funded by our founder and core funder, the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT), but we are currently transitioning to a multi-funder model.

ABOUT THE ROLE

EIT Climate-KIC is working to make a rapid change to net-zero and climate resilience possible through innovation. A key part of our work is financial innovation, where we help local leaders identify and secure the different types of finance they require (both public and private) to pursue ambitious climate action. We refer to this as finance mobilisation – the work of integrating multiple different financial instruments together to unlock new possibilities.

Our finance mobilisation work is rapidly expanding – it now covers cities, regional adaptation and argi-food. We are looking to add an experienced financial professional to the team to focus on driving forward key deals that will enable us to move further and faster. This role is wide ranging but has a primary focus on fundraising activity that attracts investment into an underlying portfolio of innovative projects and initiatives.

This includes a wide variety of City projects from the Net Zero Cities Capital Hub, six flagship innovation programmes connected to the Ireland Agri-food Deep Demonstration and an emerging portfolio of adaptation finance projects coming from regional areas across Europe. The role is to identify, mobilise, and deploy both grant funding and private investment (venture, corporate and institutional) capital to support the innovation actions.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyse the funding needs expressed by individual innovation projects, and integrate these needs into a wider funding plan that accounts for differing levels of maturity.

• Design and implement a fundraising strategy that matches these needs to suitable instruments and attracts multiple different stakeholders to invest into the integrated funding plan.

• Engage key stakeholders manage funding partnerships with the Net Zero Cities Capital Hub and Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine.

• Act as key point of contact on financial innovation on projects, including facilitation of working groups and collaborative initiatives defined in project plans.

• Collaborate with our community of investment innovation partners to build a strong community of practice in the field of investing for system transformation.

• Identify opportunities for strategic partnerships to build out investment funds to support large scale financing across regions.

Typical Tasks

• Map financial and market dynamics in a country, region and city and identify financial innovation opportunities.

• Assess projects identified by EIT Climate-KIC teams for financial viability and provide advice on the range of financial mechanisms that match.

• Foster collaboration between public and private sector financial institutions to develop large scale investment programmes with high impact potential.

• Provide guidance and education to public sector employees around options to leverage public and private financing for greater action.

Key Working Relationships

• Capital & Investment team – you will join the EIT Climate-KIC Capital & Investment team (currently 6 and growing to 8 this year) and work closely alongside the Investment Lead on the topic of finance mobilisation.

• Cities team – you will support the cities team to implement the Net Zero Cities mission, which includes development of the Net Zero Cities Capital Hub.

• Ireland Deep Demonstration – you will advise our Deep Demonstration team on finance mobilisation related to the Government of Ireland’s ambition to decarbonise the agri-food system.