Director of Engineering (SmartBidder)

Director of Engineering (SmartBidder)

About Ascend

Ascend Analytics’ climate technology software and services provide critical insights to power the energy transition. The company’s products enhance critical power supply decisions from short-term operating strategies to long-term investment and resource planning. Ascend’s solutions serve as the core analytic infrastructure for electric utilities, independent power producers, electric retailers, and financiers of energy infrastructure. To learn more about Ascend, please visit us at www.ascendanalytics.com.   

Position Overview  

This role is to lead the engineering team for SmartBidder, a market-leading SaaS product that optimizes energy market bids for energy storage and renewable resources in real-time, helping our customers realize the value that these projects can bring to the energy transition. This position requires supporting and organizing individuals across a wide-range of disciplines, including data science, machine learning, optimization, external integrations, UI/UX, and web services to deliver a high-availability, low-latency cloud software solution that is capable of operating real-world assets within tight market timelines. SmartBidder operates in an evolving, high-growth market at the forefront of renewable energy deployment, so implementing effective team processes, growing the team, and evolving system architecture to scale with the platform’s growth will be key drivers of success that this role will directly influence.  

Job Responsibilities  

• Efficiently and effectively manage a large team with diverse skill sets and levels of experience with clear goals, expectations, and areas of growth, identifying new organizational patterns and processes that help us to learn and iterate faster as we respond to customer needs 

• Advise, review, develop, and approve architectural designs that evolve our technical stack so that it is appropriately performant, observable, extensible, and easy to deploy and maintain over time 

• Inform design and development across the platform’s customer-facing components, including forecasting, optimization, and user interface 

• Work with product management and energy analysts to effectively triage customer requests, evaluate new business opportunities, and ensure we're building new infrastructure with the future in mind 

• Drive efficient release processes that ensure quality, resiliency, and efficient delivery of value to customers 

• Mentor and encourage engineers to step up and beyond their current responsibilities to foster a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing to ensure long-term individual growth and retention 

• Cultivate a fundamental understanding of energy markets and our interfaces with external systems to enable us to support new markets as more and more renewables and battery resources are connected to the energy grid around the world.  

• Communicate with external customers as needed to inform development decisions, support technical implementations, and understand customer needs and user experience 

• Grow the team to effectively meet the demands of a growing customer base  

• Assist team in triaging and resolving technical support issues  

Required Qualifications 

• 5+ years of technical management experience   

• 8+ years of experience as a back-end or full stack software engineer 

• BS or MS in Engineering, Computer Science, Data/Information Science, or related fields   

• Strong skills/proficiency in Python and at least one other programming language i.e. Java, C#, Ruby, Rust, Julia 

• Familiarity with data processing libraries (e.g., Pandas, Numpy, Scikit-Learn) 

• Willingness to directly contribute to codebase as needed 

Preferred Qualifications   

• Full-stack application design and RESTful web services development 

• Exposure to cloud computing platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS) and containerization (e.g., Docker) 

• Knowledge of data science, statistics, and machine learning 

• Familiarity with Azure DevOps 

Compensation: $200,000 - $250,000 total comp         

Negotiable based on qualifications and experience. Ascend highly values our employees and often pays above industry average. 

We offer flexible work hours in a relaxed environment with opportunities for advancement and excellent benefits, including medical, dental, vision, short- and long-term disability, parental leave, dependent care spending account, and a 401k plan.  

We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Ascend Analytics is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information or other applicable legally protected characteristics.   

Ascend Analytics is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact us at recruiting@ascendanalytics.com.