For its Quality and Sustainability Office in Garching, within the Office of the Director General, ESO is opening a Paid Associate position of Sustainability Procurement Advisor.

The Sustainability Procurement Advisor will support the implementation of ESO's Sustainable Procurement Principles and Guidelines, which are built on three pillars: social, environmental, and financial sustainability. The role focuses on turning these principles into practical, actionable procurement practices by conducting research, analysing procurement documentation, and developing tools that help ESO integrate sustainability criteria systematically and effectively into tenders. The Advisor will also contribute to monitoring and reporting on implementation progress.

The position is ideal for someone who is analytical, structured, and motivated to advance sustainable procurement in a complex scientific and technical environment.

Key Responsibilities

Research and Benchmarking

• Conduct research on sustainability standards, certifications, and benchmarks relevant to ESO procurement (e.g., ISO 14001, ecolabels, social compliance certifications, energy efficiency standards) and propose substantiated ways to integrate them into procurement processes.
• Investigate approaches to Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in public procurement and assess how LCC can be applied to ESO's procurement categories.
• Analyse Statements of Work (SoW), Technical Specifications (TS), and evaluation criteria to determine: whether sustainability requirements are already included or missing, whether existing criteria can be reused in future procurements.
• Assess the quality and relevance of sustainability requirements using the six-step methodology defined in ESO's guidelines.

Monitoring and Data Collection

• Develop overviews (tables, diagrams, dashboards) of recent or recurring procurements, showing: which sustainability criteria were included, the type of criteria (environmental, social, financial), whether they were pass/fail, scored, or descriptive, key drivers and barriers.
• Build a structured dataset to support sustainability reporting, KPI development, and future procurement planning.
• Support the Sustainability and Diversity Officer (SDO) and Requesters in reviewing supplier documentation such as sustainability reports, certifications, and human rights statements.

Knowledge Base and Tools Development

• Contribute to a living knowledge base containing:
• category-specific sustainability criteria,
• templates and standard formulations for SoW, TS, and evaluation criteria,
• case studies from ESO procurements.

• Draft user-friendly factsheets summarizing key standards, criteria, and sustainability entry points for each procurement category.

Additional Possible Contributions

• Support the SDO in preparing training materials or awareness-raising content for internal teams.
• Assist in lightweight post-tender reviews of selected procurements.
• Help document progress on sustainable procurement implementation across ESO.
• Provide support to the SDO in other sustainability-related areas as needed.