Head of Agriculture | Mpumalanga & Johannesburg | Executive

This is a rare opportunity to build the agricultural backbone of a first-of-its-kind critical metals business. You will take pioneering plant biotechnology from lab to field and shape scalable, compliant operations that redefine sustainable metal production.

As Head of Agriculture, you will be responsible for translating advanced hyperaccumulator plant technology into robust, industrial-scale agricultural systems. Operating at the intersection of agronomy, biotechnology, and operations, you will lead field programmes, nursery systems, and trials while building the operating models required to scale across sites and geographies. This is a hands-on leadership role, combining strategic design with active field execution in an early-stage, non-standard agricultural environment.

Our client is an innovative, venture-backed organisation operating at the frontier of sustainable agriculture and critical minerals. Through advanced plant science and synthetic biology, the business is developing a new model for metal production that supports soil remediation, cleaner land use, and the global energy transition. Their South African operations are central to launching the first production fields and establishing global agronomic standards.

What You’ll Do

• Lead end-to-end agricultural operations across nurseries and open-field sites, from propagation to harvest

• Design and oversee propagation systems for wild and genetically enhanced plant lines

• Deliver pilot and field programmes with accountability for plant health, biomass yield, and metal uptake

• Build and manage agronomic teams, contractors, and service providers

• Develop SOPs, playbooks, and scalable agricultural operating models

• Act as the primary interface between R&D, field operations, and downstream processing

• Transfer lab-developed protocols into reliable field execution and feed field data back into R&D

• Lead biosafety, risk management, and regulatory compliance in deployed biotech field environments

• Support site ramp-ups, multi-site expansion, and international scale-up planning

What You Bring

• Advanced qualification in agronomy, plant science, agricultural engineering, biology, or equivalent experience

• 10+ years’ hands-on experience in agricultural operations, including propagation and field trials

• Proven experience deploying novel or regulated plant systems from controlled environments into open fields

• Strong background in non-crop, wild, or high-complexity plant systems; cannabis experience is highly advantageous

• Experience operating across multiple sites or countries with variable regulatory frameworks

• Deep understanding of nursery operations, field cultivation, biosafety, and agricultural risk management

• Data-driven mindset with the ability to build systems and make decisions from field data

What Success Looks Like

• Reliable, repeatable agricultural systems operating at pilot and early commercial scale

• Strong alignment between plant performance, operational execution, and downstream processing needs

• Clear agronomic playbooks enabling rapid replication across sites and geographies

• High standards of biosafety, compliance, and operational discipline in a novel biotech field environment