Vice President of Agriculture

SUMMARY:

A leading agricultural technology company is seeking the above to be responsible for translating laboratory-developed hyperaccumulator plant technology into scalable, compliant field operations in South Africa. This role involves leading agricultural trials, developing operating models, and bridging R&D and field execution. It is hands-on, combining strategic oversight with fieldwork in early-stage, non-standard systems. The ideal candidate has experience deploying biotechnology from controlled to open-field environments, preferably within regulated or wild plant systems such as cannabis or blueberries.

POSITION INFO:

Minimum requirements for the role:

• Must have an advanced degree in Agronomy, Plant Science, Agricultural Engineering, Biology, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on operational experience
• Minimum 10 years' hands-on experience in agricultural operations, including propagation and field trials
• Must have demonstrated experience deploying novel plant systems or biotechnology from laboratory or greenhouse environments into open-field operations
• Proven track record managing pilot programs and transitioning agricultural systems from pilot to commercial scale
• Experience working with non-crop, wild, or regulated plant systems, such as cannabis or similar high-complexity crops is advantageous
• Must have prior exposure to multi-site or multi-country agricultural operations in variable regulatory environments
• Proven experience introducing non-crop plant species to new geographies
• Strong command of nursery operations, field cultivation, and harvest operations under variable environmental conditions
• Working knowledge of biosafety protocols, regulatory constraints, and risk management in agricultural and biotech field settings is essential
• Excellent data literacy with the ability to use field data to drive decisions, trade-offs, and corrective actions
• Must have a valid passport; frequent travel to the company’s operating locations in South Africa will be required
• International travel to the company’s HQ in France may be necessary

• Owning the execution of agricultural operations across nurseries and field sites, from plant propagation to harvest.
• Leading pilot and field programs with accountability for plant health, biomass yield, and metal uptake performance.
• Managing external contractors (nurseries, farmers, CROs), labour teams, and field service providers, ensuring quality control and scale-up readiness.
• Building and managing performance tracking systems and field reporting protocols, ensuring strong nursery- and field-level data collection and reporting.
• Designing and overseeing propagation systems for wild and genetically enhanced plant lines.
• Optimising vegetative propagation protocols (cuttings, mother block, tissue-culture based methods as applicable).
• Serving as the primary interface between agricultural operations, R&D teams, and downstream processing functions.
• Ensuring lab-developed plant traits, growth protocols, and handling requirements are effectively being transferred into nursery and field operations.
• Providing structured field feedback to R&D to inform plant improvement, protocol refinement, and prioritisation.
• Aligning agricultural outputs, including biomass characteristics and harvest specifications, with downstream processing and extraction requirements.
• Supporting joint planning and decision-making across functions to reduce lab-to-field and field-to-processing friction.
• Defining and documenting agronomic playbooks, SOPs, and operating standards required to reliably cultivate target hyperaccumulator plants at industrial scale.
• Building scalable and transferable cultivation systems across climates and countries.
• Developing and managing agricultural teams to execute standardised agricultural operations in pilot and commercial settings.
• Leading operational readiness assessments and site ramp-up planning for new fields and countries of operation.
• Contributing to agricultural cost modelling, resource planning, and scale-up assumptions in coordination with operations leadership.
• Developing and enforcing biosafety protocols for handling genetically enhanced hyperaccumulator plants in field environments.
• Identifying, assessing, and mitigating operational risks: biological, climatic, and regulatory.
• Leading incident response and remediation related to crop failure, contamination, or regulatory non-compliance.
• Preparing for and supporting audits, inspections, and compliance reviews.