APAC Cooling and Refrigerant Industry Research Lead

About Cascade

Join Cascade Climate, a global nonprofit propelling high‑potential climate solutions from the margins to the mainstream. The climate crisis has outpaced our response. In addition to cutting carbon emissions, we need dramatically expanded efforts on mitigating super pollutant emissions (including methane and refrigerants) to cool the planet in the near term, and scaling up carbon removal technologies to restore atmospheric balance for the long haul.

Many promising solutions remain sidelined not because they lack potential, but because they haven't gotten the push needed to overcome adoption bottlenecks. We founded Cascade to provide that push. Our team is currently focused on building the world’s capacity for durable carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and mitigating near‑term warming through lifecycle refrigerant management and transitioning to lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) chemicals.

We do this by leading ambitious initiatives spanning markets, policy and science to overcome the biggest barriers to progress. Cascade is philanthropically backed and since our launch in 2023 has earned the trust and support of leading philanthropic organizations, including Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Grantham Foundation, Quadrature Climate Foundation, and more. We are a distributed team of remarkably accomplished and insistently humble people — artists, community builders, entrepreneurs, scientists, and policy strategists — working to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Cascade is launching our first major program in Southeast Asia, focused on refrigerant management and transition - and we're looking for a Singapore or Bangkok‑based team member to help build it with us. This is a full‑time, one‑year fixed‑term role with the potential to extend. You will lead the initial market analysis to assess and document the state of next‑generation cooling equipment and lifecycle refrigerant management across Southeast Asia, helping lay the foundation for future regional engagement and program development.

At the core of this role is translation: taking what's actually happening on the ground in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVACR) industry – including supply chains, equipment servicing practices, policy implementation, and behavioral norms – and turning it into insights that directly shape Cascade's program design. You'll work closely with partners across the refrigerant and HVACR industry, policymakers, and service technicians, with periodic travel across East and Southeast Asia.

Plus, regular collaboration with our U.S.

-based team, which may require participation in meetings outside of local standard business hours.

You might be someone with hands‑on familiarity with HVACR markets or chemical refrigerant supply chains across East or Southeast Asia, and you enjoy building deep relationships with stakeholders. You may have experience conducting market or industry research – whether on HVACR equipment, refrigerant manufacturing, industrial supply chain logistics, or equipment servicing and maintenance ecosystems – and you're curious about how these sectors evolve in response to policy, regulation, and business norms.

You understand how industries function within diverse regulatory frameworks, and bring insight into how policy environments, commercial incentives, and informal practices intersect to shape business decision‑making.

• Deliver a clear, industry‑informed assessment of the current state of lifecycle refrigerant management and the low‑GWP refrigerant transition across Southeast Asia, including supply chain availability, pricing, and adoption dynamics/challenges for natural refrigerants, HFCs, HFOs, etc.
• Assess lifecycle refrigerant management practices across markets, including recovery, recycling, reclamation, destruction, and disposal pathways. Document how refrigerants are handled during equipment servicing and at equipment end‑of‑life, and identify key points where leakage, losses, or venting occur.
• Identify and clearly articulate the most significant technical,…