Hiring Engineers for Climate-Aligned Projects: Insights from the Tech for ESG Talk 

Beetroot’s recent Tech for ESG webinar sparked a lively discussion on how engineering teams can make or break an organization’s ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) goals. Moderated by Beetroot’s Account Executive Nikita Tykhomyrov, the panel brought together Marco Hirsbrunner, co-CEO of Svarmi; Maria Roquet Guardia, Environmental & Climate Tech Senior Product Manager at Zulu Ecosystems; and Julian Göbel, Managing Director and CSO at Envoria. 

We discussed the EU’s GreenTech landscape, walked through the sustainability-related blockers and enablers in tech teams, the intricacies of aligning product decisions with ESG goals, and shared practical ways to build tech capacity that delivers lasting impact cost-effectively and with the right mindset. Below is a rundown of the webinar’s key takeaways.

Spotting the blockers: What sustainability villain should fall next?

As a warm-up before the granular discussion, our speakers shared their thoughts about the one sustainability “villain” their teams would love to defeat, whether it’s bad data, greenwashing, Scope 3 emissions, or anything else. 

“For me, it’s the crowd’s paradox,” said Marco Hirsbrunner, Svarmi’s co-CEO. “In the sustainability world, you have people with so many different opinions that in the end, this huge crowd is not pulling in the same direction.” Stakeholders hold different views on the ideal emissions-reduction project, reporting standard, or circularity model, stirring disagreements within the community. That discord is the “villain” he’d like to defeat.

Maria Roquet Guardia, Environmental & Climate Tech Senior Product Manager at Zulu Ecosystems, pointed out “environmental pessimism”— the habit of dismissing a proposed fix simply because it “isn’t perfect.” Choosing “less pessimism and a bit more constructive … way of thinking” and focusing on combining diverse ideas instead of picking them apart would help the community add up the various angles in a common fight against a massive problem.

Julian Göbel, Managing Director and CSO at Envoria pointed to political headwinds, especially within the EU, that make ESG feel like a burden rather than an opportunity.  “From the global perspective, I would definitely fight that one,” he said. “We do have better, clearer, more visible guidelines, or even the freedom to decide. However, many companies and individuals still experience ESG, and the tech around it, as an obligation instead of a chance to create real impact.”

What’s shaping Europe’s GreenTech scene and what it means for tech teams

The Omnibus Directive pause is creating a two-speed market.

“The Omnibus Directive is delaying some of the ESG reporting — mainly the CSRD compliance,” noted Marco Hirsbrunner (Svarmi). “There’s more uncertainty; you have a lot of companies shifting their investment decisions into the future.”  At the same time, AI-first startups entering the ESG reporting market create a certain level of oversupply.

Transparency and traceability become non-negotiable.

From Maria Roquet Guardia’s (Zulu Ecosystems) expertise in the US and UK, there are a lot of political and social aspects surrounding what people demand from ESG-related projects. “People just want to know exactly what’s going on. They want to see the numbers and the evidence.”

Regulation is essential but too often clunky.

The Omnibus Directive delay is the headline issue everyone acknowledges. As Julian Göbel (Envoria) continued explaining, with CSRD timelines pushed back, budgets and talent earmarked for ESG reporting are being diverted elsewhere: “A lot of companies are now reshifting their resources… reallocating that to other regulations or even other processes.” 

He also reminded that mandatory rules were introduced precisely because voluntary pledges weren’t closing the climate-action gap. “Hopefully, we just see that the motivation is coming back. Even if it’s not the CSRD or any other regulation, they need to do something.”

Maria Roquet Guardia added that regulations are sometimes quite outdated; teams are “working really fast… and you start realizing that you should incorporate new aspects into these legislations, [but] what you need to be compliant with is no longer relevant.”

First movers vs. pioneers vs. laggards

“There’s a divide between the pioneers… and the smaller companies,” Marco Hirsbrunner observed. Larger players “are obviously sticking to their sustainability strategies,” but they often practice “green hushing,” keeping quiet about their green engagement while prepping their data stacks. Smaller firms might be “relieved” by extra time yet risk falling behind once the regulation kicks in again.

As Julian Göbel noted, the regulation shouldn’t be seen in a negative light; it’s aiming to achieve tangible results, like climate neutrality. However, the way the regulation was designed in the past is somehow confusing or very heavy and hard to tackle for a lot of companies. “We need to have regulation because it doesn’t work the other way,” he argued. “However, we need more assistance for companies who actually need to implement those regulations.”

Pragmatism over perfection.

“There needs to be a little bit of pragmatism when it comes to the number of data points,” Marco said, citing Switzerland’s move to cut reporting fields. For teams, it means that fewer but higher-quality metrics mean focusing scarce engineering hours on automating the data that matters, not ticking every possible box.

ESG hiring for impact: What qualities and values define a climate-aligned team?

Mission before the mechanics.

“Most of the time, it’s about finding people that care about the “why” as much as the “what” you’re building,” said Maria Roquet Guardia. “Unless we speak the same language and we are mission-aligned, conversations can get really hard.”

When hiring, she suggests looking beyond just the technical chops — for mission alignment and curiosity: “Ask scenario-based questions… it’s not about right or wrong; it’s how that person reasons and is willing to engage in a dialogue.”

Teams that share the same purpose handle tougher trade-offs; there are a lot of compromising and in-depth discussions ahead after they join the team, going into more than technical detail: performance vs. emissions, speed vs. rigor. The ability to learn from complex topics is key.

Motivation that survives pushback.

Julian Göbel looks for people who stay driven when the business case is questioned. “People need to be motivated, although the environment might act against them,” he said. Customers will challenge costs; regulators will move the goalposts. 

Because ESG spans “very many different backgrounds,” he prizes a learn-and-adapt mindset over a fixed toolkit. “It’s very important that there’s the motivation to learn, to think left or right rather than having a set background, for example, in specific techniques. The regulation, content, and new scientific information are changing while we are speaking… You always have to change.”

Comfort with ambiguity.

Building on the previous point, Marco Hirsbrunner noted that GreenTech is dominated by a market that has many regulatory shifts, data uncertainties, and field realities. “So you need developers who are comfortable with ambiguity,” he shared, and interested in venturing into adjacent areas rather than staying laser-focused on one niche.

He values pragmatists who accept that “there is no perfect solution” and flexible people — utterly important to achieve your organization’s ESG goals.

Empowerment regardless of titles.

In Maria Roquet Guardia’s perspective, everyone on the team should feel free to speak beyond the limits of their job label, even when they might not be the main specialists in that specific field. Such freedom sparks the cross-disciplinary debates especially valuable for sustainability and ESG that turns diverse expertise into better solutions:

“I’ve seen engineers challenge scientists about something specific, and then an amazing conversation has emerged from that, and a great outcome,” she noted. “The challenge came from an engineer who you wouldn’t have thought would be the one to challenge that scientist.”

In-house or external climate tech recruitment? The right mix for scaling engineering capacity

Keep the strategic core inside the company.

Julian Göbel shared a rather pragmatic approach, expressing that the organization, not a vendor, must own the long-term ESG drive: “In the end, it’s the company itself driving the change for sustainability… so it’s important that they don’t outsource all their work to external partners.”

While it is common to engage with external partners in specific areas or for particular products, building the core and staffing an internal team that understands the business goals, steers the roadmap, and safeguards IP needs to be done in-house.

Bring in specialists for narrow, certified, or mature tasks.

Julian also pointed out the limits of doing it alone: “In those very specific areas… we engage with external partners.” For example, when a lifecycle assessment vendor has 10 years of domain depth, replicating that expertise internally can burn time and budget. Targeted partnerships cover this gap without diluting focus.

Use external teams when speed or bandwidth is the blocker.

Marco Hirsbrunner tied outsourcing to time-to-market: “If you just need to have a product shipped very quickly and you don’t have the necessary resources in-house, it makes a lot of sense to work with external providers.”

But he drew the same boundary as Julian Göbel for anything meant to live beyond the first release: “If you want to have a product stay for years, you need to have the core capabilities in-house because you may need to change your external partner after some time.”

Partner externally where data costs or data quality demand it.

Maria Roquet Guardia sees collaboration pay off when datasets are expensive, and mission alignment matters: “A lot of data costs money… So if you find organizations that are data providers and have alignment in your mission and similar principles, a lot of synergies can happen there.”

Joining forces with like-minded partners accelerates progress and lets both sides improve in a beneficial collaboration loop: “You develop tools together and then provide feedback. They develop better data that you can use, and so on.”

How to decide, in practice:

Mixing these principles lets you scale responsibly: own the mission-critical core, rent the narrow expertise, and partner where shared data or speed unlocks mutual value, all while keeping climate goals front and center.

Why aligning products with ESG targets can feel like a moving target

Accuracy vs. usability: the first hurdle

Marco Hirsbrunner put it simply: “It’s a constant battle between aiming for high accuracy versus easy usability.” In an ideal world, you’d feed “thousands of data points” into every calculation, but most customers can’t supply that and won’t wait for it. 

His rule of thumb is the 80/20 sweet spot: get “the most accuracy that you can achieve in the quickest way.” He also flagged AI’s double edge: consider how much AI you deploy before “you are actually basically sabotaging your own ESG goals by the energy demand.”

The “one-click AI” myth

Building on the context of AI, Julian Göbel sees buyers chasing shortcuts: they “definitely want to have AI solutions.” Some even ask for “a one-click button solution to provide their… sustainability reporting based on no data.”  Reality calls to “meet in the middle” and use AI reasonably in specific situations.

Scientific rigor eventually wins.

For Maria Roquet Guardia, the biggest risk is dropping scientific standards: “If your analytics are not rigorous enough, then that’s one of the highest risks.” Greenwashing debates have proved that environmental and analytic rigor always wins.

AI is welcome, but only as “an enabler.” Resource-efficient processes still need transparent and defensible underlying methods.

Science keeps moving; products must, too.

Marco warned against chasing perfection: “Science is always evolving. What is seen as rigorous today may not be seen as rigorous tomorrow. You can’t wait until tomorrow, so you need to live with what is there today.”

The fix is pragmatic iteration: ship with today’s best evidence, but be ready to change your calculations if there’s new scientific evidence. Maria agreed, adding that “it’s all about traceability and transparency” so users see how and why the model evolves.

Turning specialists into one team: how to make collaborations work

Start with a shared language and mission.

With her experience at Zulu, Maria Roquet Guardia keeps cross-disciplinary meetings on track by reminding everyone that the main thing is about making sure everybody speaks the same language and creating a space to bounce ideas off and understand everybody’s perspective.

She stresses that it is important for people to understand the mission: why we are talking about this, what we are essentially building, and for what reason. Once the goal is clear, the collaboration helps turn disagreements over rigor vs. agility into healthy trade-offs and “empowering people to give their opinion, make them feel heard, be part of the conversation, and then all together coming up to a consensus.”

Create an open forum, not a fixed route.

For Julian Göbel, real progress begins when leaders “provide an environment where the exchange is possible, and it’s open.” Instead of dictating roadmaps, he aligns teams on outcomes: “You align on the vision of what you want to achieve in the end… you don’t predefine which way to go.” 

Diverse backgrounds then turn into an asset because they allow the exchange of different ways, where each person has their own mind, opportunities, and shares thoughts. And each discipline can propose its own path and adapt when the science or market shifts.

Make learning sessions hands-on and playful.

At Svarmi, Marco Hirsbrunner turns knowledge-sharing into live demos. Company-wide learning sessions or at least cross-team learning sessions let data scientists walk colleagues through their tools. A coming session will let teammates drop an orthophoto into a database and instantly see the number of cars and their locations. That “playful way to engage” helps engineers grasp scientists’ challenges and pull in the same direction.

Leave the office: site visits bond the team.

Both Maria and Marco take teams into the field. Maria says that “just going on-site to understand how the operations teams work” gives everyone firsthand insight and sparks new ideas back at the desk. Marco agreed, noting that it is especially important to bond offline for nature-based work. Shared experiences in the real world tighten alignment far better than another slide deck.

Mix remote efficiency with in-person “magic.”

Born during the pandemic, Zulu Ecosystems perfected remote routines. Yet, as your company grows, the need to schedule physical gatherings also grows stronger. “You couldn’t do a hackathon online,” Maria said. “You couldn’t do certain workshops online — they need to happen…the magic happens when you’re in the same room.” 

Day-to-day, she relies on agile processes and frequent retrospectives: “Every two weeks, you meet with the team, you talk about how it went and figure out how to better the way you work together.”

Takeaway:

• Define the why, then let experts debate the how.
• Keep communication spaces open and judgment-free.
• Use live demos, field trips, and hackathons to build empathy and spark ideas.
• Balance remote structure with occasional face-to-face sprints and keep iterating on the process itself.

How does one convince management that ESG isn’t just a checkbox?

Show it’s central intelligence, not side data.

To convince management that ESG isn’t just a checkbox, they must recognize its core importance. As Marco Hirsbrunner says, “ESG is actually at the core of an organization; the data you need to assess your ESG compliance taps into all different departments.”

Because those metrics cut across finance, HR, operations, and sales, they form a good starting point for having central intelligence over your organization and comparing that with the market, other organizations, and so on. 

The payoff, he reminds executives, is measurable: “There are a lot of studies that show that if you’re putting enough effort into your ESG reporting and the ESG data, your company will, on average, actually perform better.” Better numbers translate into better employee and client engagement long before a regulator asks for a report.

Put black figures on the table.

These values should also translate into black-ink ROI. As Julian Göbel pointed out, “What convinces management is to have green or especially black figures if the cost-benefit analysis actually works out.”

Strong ESG data already wins cheaper capital, as banks actually try for better terms and conditions for the companies with more focus on ESG and better ESG data. It also protects revenue streams. 

In automotive supply chains, in particular, OEMs now impose strict frameworks. Fail to comply and, as Julian warns, “You will be just out of business … resulting in lack of revenues, lack of cash flow.” So the equation is simple: credible ESG saves money today and keeps the sales pipeline open tomorrow. 

Point to the ticking clock.

Sometimes, the bluntest lever is still the most effective. Maria Roquet Guardia has seen boards move fastest when deadlines loom: “From my experience, it’s compliance. That’s one of the main things that helps convince management, really.”

Upcoming regulations turn optional projects into must-have systems and give ESG champions a fixed date to rally around.

Partner for impact: Let’s turn ESG ambition into everyday action

Europe’s GreenTech scene is moving fast, driven by shifting regulations, rising data expectations, and the market rewarding companies that treat sustainability as a core strategy and not a compliance chore.

At the same time, data gaps, energy budgets, shifting science, and market pressure for instant answers all tug in opposite directions. The speakers’ shared advice: choose pragmatic accuracy over perfection, use AI where it truly adds value, guard scientific integrity, and keep every assumption open to revision. That balancing act is where ESG-aligned product teams earn their stripes.

If that sounds like the kind of partnership you’re after, Beetroot is here to help. We’ve been building a vibrant group of people who care about sustainability, tech, and creating real impact. Our climate-aligned engineers and domain specialists slot into your team wherever you need extra capacity, whether it’s building the core data stack, refining AI models for energy efficiency, or navigating the next wave of EU regulations.

Ready to create measurable impact together? Let’s talk about where your GreenTech roadmap needs an extra boost and how we can bridge the gap. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinars and panel discussions. See you at the next one!