Living Lands is looking for a Landscape Business Modeller to join our team. The role will form part of the business case development team, reporting to our Financial Manager. You will work closely with landscape managers, ecologists, and external subject matter experts, drawing on a deep pool of on-the-ground experience to develop, model and present business cases across sectors including agriculture, indigenous plants, land management, game, carbon and biodiversity, and the restoration economy.
This is not a conventional business development role: we are trying to build viable, socially-mined businesses in contexts where standard financial models generally don’t apply. The work involves taking ideas that emerge from our landscape team and stress-testing them financially, and turning them into something that can be invested or funded in order to build resilience in the agricultural landscapes in which we work.
Who We Are Looking For
We are more interested in who you are and how you think than the perfect CV. The ideal candidate is someone who:
- Is analytically curious and energised by complex, messy problems -- someone who wants to pull them apart, find the numbers hiding inside them, and build something that tells you whether an idea actually works.
- Has a bit of a nerd streak: someone happy to set up a model to understand how a Honeybush supply chain works, what a carbon market actually pays out, or what the real cost of running a fire crew looks like.
- Picks things up quickly, is comfortable with ambiguity, and does not need a perfectly defined brief to get started.
- Has numerical intuition to build a back-of-envelope model to guide what information is needed next.
- Can break down and package business case complexity into a pitch deck, a written proposal as well as adaptable models (not only spreadsheet based)
- Wants to be part of building something, not just executing a defined function.
- Will thrive in a small, high-trust team where people are genuinely committed to the work.
We are not necessarily looking for someone who has done this exact job before, or someone has fixed ideas about how it should be done. We are working in territory that does not have a well-worn path, and we need someone who finds that exciting rather than unsettling.
Key Responsibilities
- Take landscape ideas from initial concept through to investor- or funder-ready business cases, working with landscape managers and subject matter experts to gather the inputs you need.
- Build financial models: from quick back-of-envelope calculations through to more detailed projections and sensitivity analyses — that allow us to stress-test ideas and make decisions quickly.
- Develop business plans and proposals that clearly articulate value propositions, financial viability, operational models and impact outcomes.
- Conduct market research to understand what comparable businesses charge, what funders and investors are looking for, and where the gaps and opportunities are.
- Support pitching and presentations to investors, funders, landowners and partners.
- Work across the team to keep pipeline momentum on active business cases and flag risks early.
- Represent Living Lands in relevant networks and forums to surface new opportunities.
Requirements and Experience
Essential:
- At least 5 years of working experience in a relevant field.
- Financial and numerical literacy: you do not need a finance degree but you need to be comfortable building models, reading numbers critically, and explaining financial logic to non-financial audiences. Financial modelling experience would be a strong plus.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to turn complex, multi-part ideas into clear documents and presentations.
- Ability to work independently, manage your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it
- Comfort working in contexts where the brief evolves and the answers are not obvious
Advantageous:
- Experience in business development, agricultural economics, rural enterprise, or a related field.
- Existing networks in agricultural finance, impact investment or rural development in a Southern African context.
- A postgraduate qualification in business, agriculture, natural resource management or a related field.
- Familiarity with landscape finance, natural capital, carbon or biodiversity markets, or conservation economy frameworks.
Preferred Attributes
- Genuine curiosity about how landscapes, economies and communities fit together.
- Practical and solutions-oriented: not someone who over-analyses before acting, someone who can take into account the real, on-the-ground realities.
- Comfortable being the least experienced person in the room on some things and the most useful person in the room on others.
- Entrepreneurial instinct: able to see opportunity in complexity even in the opportunity is not ‘standard’.
Pay: From R30 000,00 per month
Application Question(s):
- Are you based in the Eastern Cape or Western Cape? If yes, please indicate whether you are close to our landscape offices in Joubertina/Baviaanskloof, or describe your location and your capacity to travel regularly to those offices.
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Joubertina, Eastern Cape
