Lead Sustainability Consultant

Nexio Projects is looking for a Lead Sustainability Consultant to help lead the development and delivery of our sustainability finance and reporting services. You will connect climate strategy with investment decisions and private equity portfolio value creation, quantify climate-related risks, impacts and opportunities in financial terms, and translate CSRD/ESRS and IFRS S1/S2 requirements into practical, decision-useful solutions for finance and sustainability leaders. As part of this role, you will build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and manage engagements from scoping through delivery. This role is suited to either a finance professional (corporate finance, FP&A, valuation, deal advisory or financial risk) who has worked on, or wants to specialise in, climate and sustainability topics, or a sustainability professional with proven, hands-on financial modelling skills, looking to apply that expertise in a hands-on, client-facing, service-building capacity. 

Hi, we’re Nexio Projects! 🌍

Nexio Projects is a sustainability consultancy of 40+ people headquartered in Rotterdam, serving hundreds of European mid-market clients across CSRD/ESRS, EcoVadis, B Corp, CDP and net-zero strategy. We are a certified B Corp (one of the highest-scoring B Corp consultancies in the Benelux), a certified Great Place To Work®, a top-rated consulting firm per Verdantix and consultancy.nl, and a Platinum EcoVadis strategic consulting partner. We practise what we advise, and we hire people who combine technical rigour with a light touch: human, humble, hardworking and allergic to taking themselves too seriously.

Why this role exists 🍀

Sustainability reporting is rapidly becoming part of corporate financial reporting. CSRD and the ESRS have made sustainability disclosure a board-level, audit-grade exercise. The ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2 are becoming the global baseline, while the market is increasingly demanding that sustainability strategy be translated into a credible financial business case that links to enterprise value creation and supports capital allocation. Our clients, European mid-market companies and international groups, need advisors who speak both languages: rigorous financial analysis and deep sustainability expertise. Increasingly, clients are asking us not just what to disclose, but what climate means for their numbers: what a carbon price does to margins, which assets are exposed to physical risk and which decarbonisation levers pay back.

You will split your time between helping shape Nexio's next generation of sustainability finance and reporting services and applying them in client engagements. Rather than joining an established practice with fixed methodologies, you will help define how we approach emerging topics such as climate risk quantification, decarbonisation business cases, financial effects disclosures under ESRS E1 and IFRS S2, and how sustainability factors into investment appraisal, budgeting and capital allocation.

Client engagements will provide the testing ground for new ideas. In turn, you will use lessons learned from delivery to strengthen our methodologies, tooling and commercial propositions, helping turn promising concepts into repeatable services.

What you’ll do  🧭

Service & practice development

You will join a team building and scaling Nexio's new services. The objective is to develop services that are commercially viable, repeatable and transferable across the business, rather than dependent on the individual who originally created them. This will include:

• Developing methodologies, tooling and reusable delivery assets that make our engagements faster, more consistent and more profitable.

• Building robust, reusable Excel-based financial models (scenario analysis, NPV/IRR, sensitivities) that translate operational and climate assumptions, such as carbon prices, energy costs and physical hazard data, into P&L, balance sheet and cash-flow impacts

• Developing ESG due diligence offerings for investors and portfolio companies, covering material risk, regulatory exposure, climate, value-chain and operational performance.

• Building post-acquisition value creation approaches that translate diligence findings into measurable improvement initiatives, investment priorities and management action plans.

• Developing exit-readiness assessments for portfolio companies, identifying ESG gaps that could affect valuation, buyer confidence, financing, disclosure quality or transaction readiness.

• Creating investor-grade tools and methodologies linking ESG performance to enterprise value, risk mitigation, EBITDA improvement and exit positioning, such as climate risk quantification, Marginal Abatement Cost Curves and internal carbon pricing.

• Contributing to proposals, thought leadership and client development alongside the leadership team.

• Capturing insights from pilot engagements and using them to continuously improve methodologies, pricing and delivery approaches.

Client engagement and delivery

Your client work will focus particularly on new and developing service areas. You will therefore play an important role in ensuring that emerging offerings are practical, relevant and deliverable, not only technically well designed. This will include:

• Translating complex regulatory, technical and market developments into practical client solutions.

• Supporting CFOs and finance teams in embedding sustainability into corporate strategy, capital allocation, planning and financial reporting, linking climate priorities to EBITDA, cash flow and enterprise value.

• Quantifying climate-related risks and opportunities in financial terms: for example carbon cost exposure under NGFS or IEA scenarios, asset damage and downtime from physical hazards, or revenue at risk and upside from shifting demand, and feeding these into ESRS E1 and IFRS S2 disclosures.

• Building decarbonisation business cases that CFOs can take to the board: evaluating abatement levers using Marginal Abatement Cost Curves, NPV, IRR, payback and sensitivities to carbon and energy prices, and translating the results into costed, phased transition roadmaps with financing options and clear links to budgeting and capital allocation.

• Supporting private equity investors and portfolio companies in identifying and quantifying sustainability value creation opportunities, from due diligence through ownership and exit: revenue growth, operating efficiencies, capex requirements and climate risks, translated into prioritised initiatives and measurable financial outcomes.

• Delivering high-quality analysis, recommendations, tools and implementation support, and owning the quality of models and quantitative content, including reviewing consultants' models before they reach the client.

• Working with our reporting specialists on internal control frameworks, ESG data management processes and reporting manuals that make sustainability data audit-ready, and acting as the client's counterpart to their external assurance provider.

• Coordinating multidisciplinary project teams, providing guidance and coaching to consultants throughout project delivery.

• Scoping engagements and managing their economics: agreeing clear deliverables, monitoring budgets, flagging and agreeing scope changes, and spotting follow-on opportunities.

What you bring 🎒

Must-haves

• 5+ years in a finance role such as corporate finance, FP&A, valuation, transaction advisory, financial risk management or climate finance advisory, gained at a Big Four firm, a strategy or boutique advisory firm, a bank or an insurer; or in a sustainability role with substantial financial modelling responsibility.

• A Master's degree in finance, economics, econometrics or a related quantitative field. A professional qualification such as CFA, FRM, ACCA/ACA or RA is a plus.

• Working knowledge of CSRD/ESRS (particularly double materiality and ESRS E1) and IFRS S2, especially the requirements on current and anticipated financial effects.

• Strong, hands-on financial modelling in Excel: you can build a clean, well-structured, auditable model from scratch (DCF/NPV, scenario and sensitivity analysis, three-statement linkages) and walk a CFO through it.

• Practical understanding of climate economics: transition and physical risk, climate scenarios (e.g. NGFS, IEA), carbon pricing and abatement costs, and how these flow through to impairment, provisions, capex, cost of capital and valuation.

• Fluent English. Dutch or French is a strong plus.

• Proven ability to manage multiple complex, high-stakes projects and to present with authority to audiences ranging from operational teams to the C-suite.

What sets you apart

• Experience with ESG reporting; impact measurement or valuation methods (e.g. impact-weighted accounts and natural capital valuation); or internal controls and assurance readiness, so you can work seamlessly with our reporting and assurance colleagues.

• Hands-on experience with climate risk data and tools (e.g. physical risk platforms, NGFS scenario data, carbon price forecasts), or with Python or R for scenario and data analysis.

• Exposure to sustainable finance and investor expectations: EU Taxonomy alignment, green or sustainability-linked financing, and what makes a transition plan credible to lenders and investors.

• A track record of building or scaling a service offering, not just delivering one.

• Familiarity with ERP and ESG reporting systems (SAP, Workiva or similar)

• AI fluency: hands-on experience with agentic AI and building it into real workflows, so that you use it to work faster and better rather than only to talk about it.

• An intrapreneurial streak: you see a gap in the market or in our delivery model, and you close it.

You probably won't enjoy this if

• You want a playbook before you act. We're still writing the playbook, that's partly the job.

• You see business development as separate from consulting

• You see sustainability reporting as a marketing exercise. Our clients' reports are assured, and so is our credibility.

• You need a big-firm hierarchy to feel comfortable. We're team of 40+ people; you'll have real ownership from week one.

• You're hoping a smaller firm means a quieter workload. In our experience it is simply a different one: more ownership, more visibility and clients who expect just as much. Most of us find that energising, but it is worth knowing going in.

What we offer  🎁

• A front-row seat in one of the fastest-moving areas of corporate reporting and strategy, with real ownership over how a growing consultancy responds to it.

• An annual training allowance (with time and costs partially covered) and the room to specialise.

• Pension plan, transportation allowance, wellbeing contribution, and a free Swapfiets subscription.

• Hybrid working: 3 days in our Rotterdam office, 2 days from home, with home-office equipment provided.

• A team culture that includes weekly Friday drinks with a gratitude award, bi-annual team events, and Earth Day volunteering.

• The opportunity to take ideas from early market research through to paid projects and scalable offerings

• Direct exposure to Nexio's leadership, commercial teams and senior client stakeholders

• Significant autonomy over how services are designed, tested and commercialised

Practicalities  📋

📍 Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands (hybrid)
🕐 Type: Full-time (40 hours per week)
🗓️ Start: 1 December 2026
📨 Applications: Reviewed on a rolling basis. If you're on the fence, apply; the worst we can say is no. Given the volume we receive, we can't send personal feedback to everyone, but we promise concrete feedback to all applicants who make it to the recruiter interview round. Our hiring process is the following:

1. Recruiter interview | online | 30 minutes: A conversation about your background, your experience, and what you're looking for in your next role.

2. Hiring manager interview | online | 45 minutes: A deeper conversation about the technical side of the role, plus a walkthrough of your take-home case study (a short, practical exercise such as quantifying a climate risk or building a decarbonisation business case) and how you would turn it into a client proposal.

3. Final interview | on-site in Rotterdam | 30 minutes: A chance to meet with senior members of the team, talk about how you like to work, and see if it feels like a mutual cultural fit.

4. Offer: If it's a mutual match, we'll move quickly to get you an offer. Welcome aboard, Nexian! 🎉

We are an equal-opportunity organisation and deeply value diversity, equity, and inclusion in our recruitment process. We strongly encourage applicants from all backgrounds and experiences. 🌈