Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. Community
Energy Labs is working to meet that challenge by helping to reduce the carbon
footprint of buildings with our innovative, machine learning-powered SaaS
platform.
We’re looking for a Lead Backend Engineer with experience building resilient
event-driven microservices, and a deep hands-on devops skillset, to help us
architect, scale, and operate our platform.
In this role, you’ll be the first full-time engineer on our team and will
partner with our Head of Engineering to design and implement solutions to our
most important technical challenges as we move from successful prototype into
production. This role will be rigorous and require a wide-ranging skill set
(but we hope fun and rewarding) and our interview process reflects that.
**WHAT WE DO**
Community Energy Labs enables buildings to use energy when clean sources of
power are available and to use less energy overall by making smart decisions
about when and how energy is used. We primarily work with communities and
schools, whose buildings make up nearly 30% of the commercial floor space in
the US!
Community Energy Labs, its employees, and its customers are driven to be a
part of the solution to saving our planet. Our software combines cutting edge
control algorithms, machine learning, and traditional control techniques to
lower cost and manage energy. We combine that with an intuitive user interface
that doesn’t require a PhD in mechanical engineering to make saving money and
the planet easy for everyone - even cash-strapped schools with overworked
building operators.
CEL's core AI-powered clean building control platform concept was a regional
winner of CleanTech Open's 2020 international accelerator, an overall winner
in the 2020 Madrona Venture Labs Go Vertical challenge, a three time SBIR
winner with the Department of Energy, USDA, and NSF. CEL is a community member
in Elemental Excelerator, Google for Startups and other prestigious
accelerators. Follow CEL on LinkedIn.
**ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES**
// BACKEND SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
Partner with the Head of Engineering to understand stakeholder needs and
create architectural designs and technical specifications
Implement efficient, resilient, scalable microservices, libraries, and data
pipeline components
Write automated tests and perform ad-hoc testing on systems as needed
// INFRASTRUCTURE AND DEVOPS
Collaborate on defining our devops best practices and researching cloud
infrastructure tools and solutions
Implement configuration management and observability systems and dashboards
Participate in the devops lifecycle to support our production systems
including on-call rotation
// COLLABORATION, MENTORSHIP, & COMMUNICATION
Mentor more junior team members, providing encouragement, constructive
feedback, and support their growth and development
Create and maintain technical documentation to facilitate knowledge sharing
with the team
Review and provide feedback on code changes from other team members to ensure
code quality and maintain best practices
Participate in weekly, per-sprint, and quarterly planning and agile rituals to
prioritize work and coordination with team members
Foster a culture of collaboration, ownership, curiosity, and accountability
**QUALIFICATIONS**
// EXPERIENCE REQUIRED
5+ years of backend software development experience, preferably in the context
of a microservice-oriented SaaS platform
3+ years of hands-on devops experience, owning mission-critical production
systems in an AWS or GCP environment
3+ years of experience with event-driven or streaming service architectures
// NECESSARY SKILLS/ABILITIES
Expert-level proficiency with Python and common libraries (SQLAlchemy,
Alembic, FastAPI)
Strong proficiency with Docker
Strong proficiency with networking tools and concepts like VPC
Strong proficiency with SQL and relational databases
Proficiency with AWS or GCP container runtime environments (ECS, EKS, etc)
Strong English-language written and verbal communication skills
Experience working with observability tools like Grafana/Prometheus, New
Relic, Data Dog, etc.
Ability to balance scope, time, and quality needs associated with product
development
Desire to learn new skills
Strong critical thinking abilities
// NICE TO HAVE, BUT NOT REQUIRED
Experience with API design
Experience with BACnet or other building control technologies
Experience with IoT platforms
Experience with building machine learning pipelines and runtime infrastructure
Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform
Experience implementing frontend systems in React or similar technologies
Experience working in a startup environment
A great sense of humor
* _ROLE BASICS *_
// EXPECTED HOURS OF WORK AND TRAVEL
This is a fully remote role with some travel responsibilities (for partner and
customer prospect visits, conferences, occasional company get-togethers, etc.)
This position is a full-time position that may occasionally require extra
hours and weekend work that is not compensated as overtime
CEL is a small team where versatility is essential. We embrace a wide range of
responsibilities and functions.
// SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
This position initially has no supervisory responsibilities. As an integral
part of CEL's product team, you'll operate with a high degree of autonomy
while actively collaborating with the product team (our CEO), Head of
Engineering, Data Science and some non technical team member for direction,
support and mentorship.
// SALARY
The annual salary for this position is expected to be $120k - 160k per year
for an FTE or 40 hours per week work schedule.
// PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
Some travel may be required for conferences or support with customers
No heavy lifting is expected
ATTRIBUTES
// Ideal CEL community members demonstrate
– Curiosity
– Adaptability
– Trustworthiness
– A pragmatic approach to effort vs. value
– Willingness to communicate & teach
– Willingness to listen & learn
YES, THAT MEANS YOU!
// We’ve read the research and we know that certain underrepresented groups in
tech might read our post and think “Oh, gee, well I only have nine out of ten
qualifications.” If our mission and this job speak to you and you have the
interest and ability to work smart, learn, and grow with us then we want you
to apply for this job!
Community Energy Labs is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified
applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race,
color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression,
pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information,
protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by state or
federal law.
APPLY NOW
// <https://forms.monday.com/forms/f0e590d6d526907ef9b4e60682b9afcb?r=use1>
