Role purpose

The Lead, Innovative Finance for Industrial Decarbonization is a senior, cross-cutting leadership role for someone who views finance as a creative instrument for systems transformation, not merely a source of capital.

The role goes beyond blended finance. It integrates:

• creative / catalytic finance
• value-chain and supply-chain finance
• carbon finance and carbon-market innovation
• economic and market design
• AI-enabled financial intelligence
• new institutional and incentive models

You will design next-generation financial architectures to decarbonize heavy industry with a focus on steel, cement, and chemicals sectors and cross-cutting topics. This includes for example early-project de-risking and transition insurance, supply-chain financing, demand-pooling, carbon-performance incentives, and new ways to finance clusters, infrastructure, and technology transitions. Your work will help make industrial decarbonization bankable, investable, scalable, and socially grounded, across both emerging and advanced economies, and interesting for the philanthropic community.

As both strategist and practitioner, you will manage catalytic grant portfolios, shape stakeholder coalitions, reimagine investment ecosystems, and support priority geographies in aligning finance with industrial, energy, and trade strategies towards the decarbonization of heavy industry.

The role demands creativity, analytical sophistication, economic intuition, systems thinking, and diplomatic leadership – mobilizing capital while designing the market conditions, value-chain incentives, and institutional innovations needed for industrial transformation.

Major Duties and Responsibilities

• Creative Finance, Value-Chain Finance and Economic Model Innovation
  • Design new financial models and capital architectures that unlock industrial decarbonization across entire value chains (e.g., iron ore → steel → manufacturing → buyers).
  • Build mechanisms such as offtake-backed finance, carbon-linked performance contracts, supplier transition finance, demand guarantees, risk-sharing pools, and transition insurance.
  • Integrate carbon finance into industrial pathways, including crediting mechanisms, MRV integration, carbon-intensity benchmarking, carbon contracts for difference, and carbon-performance incentives.
  • Apply AI/data intelligence to map capital gaps, forecast cost curves, detect early-stage project risks, and identify system bottlenecks.
  • Shape economic models that align industrial transformation with energy system changes, infrastructure needs, and trade competitiveness.

• Financial Structuring and Advanced Analysis
  • Structure catalytic instruments (grants, guarantees, blended layers, outcome-based funding, carbon instruments).
  • Build analytical frameworks linking industrial metrics (carbon intensity, capex, scrap flows, hydrogen readiness) to investment-grade propositions.
  • Support multi-country and multi-partner financing platforms that blend public, private, philanthropic, and carbon-based sources.

• Systems-Change Finance and Country Engagement
  • Lead high-level finance dialogues with priority countries, supporting national industrial strategies, energy transitions, and supply-chain competitiveness.
  • Identify market, policy, regulatory, or institutional constraints that limit investment and design system-wide interventions to remove them.
  • Support governments in developing investment ecosystems, from early-project preparation to cluster development and carbon-market integration.

• Grant Strategy and Partnership Development
  • Design catalytic grants that build data transparency, financial readiness, pipeline acceleration, and local institutional capacity.
  • Manage a grant portfolio that supports innovative finance pilots, new instruments, or system-change interventions.
  • Collaborate with CSOs, think tanks, DFIs, MDBs, and governments to co-develop investment pipelines and innovative approaches.

• Partnerships, Coalitions and Ecosystem Development
  • Build coalitions with financial institutions, industry, buyers, philanthropic networks, DFIs, carbon-market actors, and accelerators.
  • Represent the Hub in global forums, investment platforms, carbon-finance convenings, and supply-chain dialogues.
  • Strengthen the visibility and impact of Hub-supported financial models through storytelling, playbooks, and knowledge products.

• Portfolio Oversight and Learning Architecture
  • Maintain oversight of finance-related portfolios across sectors and regions.
  • Conduct portfolio reviews, diagnose systemic bottlenecks, and lead adaptive management.
  • Capture lessons to build a learning architecture for financial innovation in heavy-industry transitions.

Profile

• Master’s degree in finance, economics, industrial systems, engineering, public policy, or equivalent experience at the intersection of finance + industrial transformation.

• 10–15 years in innovative finance, economic design, climate finance, industrial/transition finance, carbon finance, or supply-chain finance.

• Experience designing creative financial mechanisms, not only traditional blended finance.

• Strong understanding of heavy-industry value chains and the economics of industrial decarbonization.

• Demonstrated ability to work with DFIs/MDBs, governments, investors, and industrial actors.

• Excellent relationship management, negotiation, and communication skills.

• Fluency in English; additional languages preferred.

• Ability to work autonomously across cultures, time zones, and institutional contexts.

Core Competencies

• Strategic Finance Thinking: Designs forward-looking financing strategies that reshape industrial value chains and accelerate decarbonization at scale.

• Systems Design: Understands industrial, energy, financial, and policy systems as interconnected structures and designs interventions that shift incentives across them.

• Supply-Chain and Value-Chain Logic: Analyzes supply-chain dynamics end-to-end and develops financial mechanisms that unlock transformation across upstream, midstream, and downstream actors.

• Carbon Finance Expertise: Integrates carbon pricing, crediting, MRV, and carbon-performance incentives into innovative financial architectures for heavy industry transitions.
• Creative Structuring: Develops novel financial instruments—beyond traditional blended finance—that address early-project risks, market failures, and system bottlenecks.
• AI-Enabled Insight: Uses data, analytics, and AI tools to map financing gaps, identify leverage points, and inform financial and economic design.
• Partnership Building: Cultivates trust-based partnerships with governments, DFIs, industry, buyers, CSOs, investors, and innovators to co-create solutions.
• Policy–Finance Alignment: Translates industrial, energy, and trade policies into actionable financial strategies that strengthen competitiveness and unlock investment.
• Communication and Diplomacy: Navigates complex political, technical, and financial landscapes with clarity, tact, and influence.
• Learning and Adaptation: Builds learning loops that enable continuous improvement of financial models, ecosystem strategies, and institutional approaches.
• Integrity and Accountability: Acts with transparency, fairness, and alignment to the Hub’s mission while stewarding resources responsibly.

Terms of Appointment

The remuneration package is competitive and commensurate with experience. The contract will be a fixed-term appointment, subject to local hiring conditions, and will be renewable.

Role Location

Global / Remote

How to Apply

To apply for this position, please ensure you complete the Application Form provided below by 09 February 2026 (23:59 hrs, GMT +1). It is essential that you submit your CV in English, specifically in Microsoft Word format (.doc/.docx), not exceeding 10MB.

Applications in other languages or formats will not be considered.

Rest assured, all information will be handled with the utmost confidentiality.

SRI Executive is exclusively retained by Global Industry Hub (GIH) to undertake this assignment.