Given most people will spend a significant portion of their adult lives at work, work as a life domain is a salient source of meaning and well-being. Yet sometimes work is overwhelming, creating stressors which threaten sense of self. This presentation explores how climate change experts function and cope in a wicked problem occupation which asks them to engage in an overwhelming problem that as individuals they can never solve. As a threat to global health, anthropogenic climate change is a recognized wicked problem. Climate change is global in nature, socially embedded, future-oriented, and politically charged, all unique attributes contributing to its wickedness and capacity to overwhelm. These attributes of climate change might create unique stressors for those individuals who work on climate change as part of their occupation. Climate change scientists are uniquely knowledgeable and aware of the problem of climate change, thinking about it frequently and talking about it routinely as part of their occupation. Scientists also play critical roles in society as they generate ideas for solving problems, inform decision makers, and influence public discourse. This places climate change scientists at the frontier of climate change as a wicked sustainability problem. Because of this exposure and the unique attributes of climate change, climate change scientists may experience unique stressors as part of their occupation. Using theoretical scholarship from two primary fields of study, occupational identity scholarship and stress and coping studies, this research develops an initial framework for exploring how experts identify and cope with a wicked problem occupation. Future research opportunities and implications for sustainability scientists are discussed.