Careers
Join our crew of brave, curious and hard-working thinkers and doers.
We’re working for a regenerative world where the planet is treated as indisposable and communities thrive.
We invite you to create this future with us.
At Upstream, we believe in the power of inspirational invitation. Within the larger plastic pollution and reuse movements, we are conveners, initiators, and story-tellers working to catalyze and amplify solutions for the better world already being built. We foster a creative, proactive culture where a rich mix of talented people want to come, stay, connect as both colleagues and humans, and co-create a more joyful, just world every day.
Over the past few years, Upstream has undergone a metamorphosis to maximize our ability to transform the US and Canada’s throw-away society to a culture of stewardship. As an organization, Upstream is unique in its singular focus on reuse, position as a thought leader, and access to a large network of stakeholders from the NGO, business, and government sectors. Given the distributed, small nature of our team and large geographic focus, we take a high level role and focus on serving the movement in a way that is impactful and scalable.
Development Director
Application deadline: Feb. 10 2026
The Development Director is a highly dynamic and collaborative senior executive responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive, sustainable, and scalable growth and fundraising strategy for the organization. This role requires high levels of executive skills including 7+ years experience in the fundraising field. This leader will develop and execute a strategic fundraising plan for the organization and be responsible for helping Upstream reach its income and other development goals. This role involves leading fundraising efforts, strengthening donor and partner relationships, and enhancing the organization's visibility among key audiences. The successful candidate will be dynamic, engaged, and dedicated to continual learning. This person manages the Fundraising Team members and the team’s activities.
This search is being led by NRG Consulting Group. Reach out to Jaclyn Jones at jaclyn@nrgconsultinggroup.org with any questions. Inquiries to Upstream will not receive a response.
Policy Intern
Application deadline: Jan. 30, 2026
This position’s responsibilities will support our policy team’s tracking of reuse funding opportunities and municipal, state / provincial, and federal reuse policy. This role will also support the policy team as we convene and support reuse advocates across the US and Canada in our Reuse Solutions Network.
All work for this position will be conducted remotely, and candidates must reside in AZ, IL, MD, ME, NC, CA, TX or NY.
This position’s responsibilities will support our Strategic Initiative Team in efforts to identify tactical barriers to widespread reuse and create solutions to overcome them, with the overarching goal of achieving widespread, quality, shared, interoperable reuse infrastructure. More specifically, this position will support the Strategic Initiatives Director on a project to develop a behavioral science design guide for reuse systems.
All work for this position will be conducted remotely, and candidates must reside in AZ, IL, MD, ME, NC, CA, TX or NY.
Research Intern for Behavior Science Research Project
Application deadline: Jan. 30, 2026