Senior Policy Advisor, Climate Protection

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Position description

Future Matters is hiring a senior policy professional to join our Brussels-based climate team and lead advocacy on one of the EU’s highest-impact, most neglected climate opportunities.

KEY INFORMATION

• Compensation: €4,828 – €5,668 gross monthly, depending on experience, on a 13.92-month Belgian contract;
• Benefits: €160 per month lunch budget, private pension, private health insurance covering hospitalization, public transport budget, teleworking + internet allowance, work equipment budget, professional development budget, and up to 10% paid time for professional development;
• Annual leave: 20 statutory + 7 extra-legal vacation days;
• Travel: approximately three weeks per year for team retreats and field meetings;
• Contract: Permanent, full-time;
• Start date: Autumn 2026;
• Applications: Apply by 17 July for priority review; reviewed on a rolling basis thereafter, so early Application is encouraged.

ABOUT FUTURE MATTERS AND OUR CLIMATE WORK

Future Matters exists to reduce global risks by ensuring the most important ideas are turned into policy change.

Good policy ideas that could make a difference on serious issues like climate protection, AI governance, and biosecurity are relatively common. The best ones, however, are often overlooked, and even the right idea goes nowhere without enough support to pass it.

We identify which influential policy ideas are politically feasible and not yet getting enough attention, then map the landscape and build the evidence, arguments, and coalitions that ultimately turn those ideas into policy.

The EU has outsized influence on global carbon emissions. Its measures can release billions in public and private investment and avert gigatonnes of emissions globally.

Our 2024 prioritisation study, “Eight EU Policy Priorities for Global Decarbonization“, identified the highest-impact opportunities for the 2024 to 2029 mandate, and we have been working to advance several of them since.

The team currently runs three priority dossiers: scaling up low-emission proteins in the EU, EU-India cooperation on steel decarbonisation, and cost-effectiveness and disbursement rates of EU finance for clean-tech deployment and emissions mitigation in low- and middle-income countries.

Our climate work has earned repeated recognition and support of Giving Green, a leading charity evaluator that identifies the highest-impact climate giving opportunities globally. Recently, our recommendations have been mirrored in the EU-India Joint Comprehensive Strategic Agenda (January 2026) and influential in the widening of the EU Biotech Act’s scope to improve market access for low-emission proteins.

OUR TEAM CULTURE

Future Matters seeks to create an environment where talented people can do their best work. Employees describe our workplace feel as “warm and sciency.” A few of our practices and values:

• We believe the best argument, evidence, or reasoning should determine our actions even if it doesn’t come from the highest ranking person in the room. We celebrate changing our minds given new information;
• We are relentlessly driven by impact. We look for what actually changes outcomes, even if it is unglamorous, rather than pursuing more prestigious or commonly understood activities;
• We accept, own, and learn from mistakes. We have a Slack channel where everyone, including directors, shares their recent mistakes and lessons learned;
• We get things done fast. Instead of aiming for perfection, we ask, “Is this safe enough to try?” and lean into action;
• We care for and support each other, appreciate everyone’s contributions, and help each other succeed;
• We gather twice a year for team retreats, where we work intensively on our most important projects and get to know each other.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

Our research has identified more high-impact policy areas than the team currently has capacity to advocate for. This role will expand our impact by leading work on a new, early-stage area. Combining research, direct EU policy advocacy, coalition coordination with allied advocates, and building the wider field’s capacity to have more impact through strategic advising, this role will have end-to-end project management and leadership on a significant file. This will be the fourth member of our climate team and a senior individual contributor.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE ROLE

• Gain a working command of Future Matters’ impact maximisation methodology. In the first six months, we will invest in significant training and support for you to learn our approach to prioritisation research and strategic change making so you can implement the principles into your work;
• Manage a policy area end to end. You will own a new file’s strategy, prioritisation, stakeholder map, advocacy and capacity-building outputs;
• Shape strategy with the team. Lead the prioritisation and evaluation cycle for the areas you own, and contribute to strategic planning across the team’s other files;
• Lead direct engagement with EU institutions (Commission, Parliament, Council), Member State representations, and third-country interlocutors;
• Advise and coordinate allied advocates working towards shared objectives, helping shape a coalition strategy when needed;
• Collaborate on other files. Contribute to the delivery of plans on teammates’ files, including advocacy meetings, research, and other activities;
• Build the capacity of others. Help lead workshops and advisory sessions that help allied advocates and policymakers work more effectively, both on your own policy area and, alongside the team, on cross-cutting work;
• Support fundraising for your area. Contribute to funder reporting and grant applications, working with our Partnerships team;
• Represent Future Matters at relevant Brussels conferences, panels, and events.

You will work most closely with the Senior Policy Manager who leads the team, the other Policy Manager and the Policy Officer on the climate team, and colleagues from our Partnerships team. On a weekly basis, you will also interface with the Director who supervises the climate department, and the entire organisation in an all-staff meeting.

Qualifications

You might be coming from a senior policy or advocacy role at a climate think tank or NGO, a public affairs consultancy with genuine policy depth, an EU institution, a national ministry or permanent representation, or a development or public finance institution where you worked the EU policy angle.

A successful applicant will have most or all of these:

• At least five years of work experience in EU policy (advocacy, policymaking, consulting, or a combination), with substantive command of both the formal and the informal EU policymaking processes, including Council and Parliament dynamics alongside the Commission;
• Substantive policy experience in at least one of: EU climate policy, industrial or energy policy, climate or sustainable finance, trade policy with a climate angle, or international cooperation with a climate angle. The ability to move across files matters more than deep mastery of any single domain;
• Strong, self-directed project management. A track record of scoping, planning, delivering, and adjusting workstreams independently, including starting things from a blank page;
• A strategic orientation, grounded in structured thinking. You have a history of taking an analytical and yet action-oriented approach to policy work. You are comfortable weighing the odds and the likely size of different outcomes to decide what is worth pursuing;
• Flexibility and policy agility. You’ll need to grasp a new policy area quickly and switch focus across files based on team needs. We prioritise impact over process, which sometimes means working differently from most NGOs or think tanks. Your history should show flexibility and ability to learn on the job;
• Strategic communications across audiences. You can make climate arguments in the language of competitiveness, security, industry, and finance, drawing on the evidence those audiences actually use. You are curious about how different institutions think;
• A capacity-building appetite and a collaborative, low-ego style. You are drawn to the training and advising side of the work, you share knowledge and support peers, and you can adjust your thinking when a colleague brings a better argument.

This is a Brussels-based role. Candidates must already have the right to work in Belgium. We are not able to sponsor work permits at this time. You will also need full professional fluency in English and a demonstrated commitment to climate protection.

BONUS QUALITIES

You do not need these in order to apply, but we are especially interested in candidates who also bring some of the following:

• Substantive experience in climate finance or sustainable finance;
• Working knowledge of French and/or German, given our Council and Member State engagement. Other EU languages welcome;
• Member State engagement reach beyond Germany, France in particular;
• Existing relationships across the Council or Parliament;
• Experience designing or applying a structured methodology (strategy consulting, evaluation, or structured prioritisation in any sector);
• Past management experience, with a view to possible team growth;
• Capacity-building or training-delivery experience (workshop design, structured advisory engagements).

Application instructions

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