Director of Software Engineering

Axiom Cloud is transforming how the world’s cooling systems are powered, operated, and maintained, in order to generate significant climate and financial impact. We need to deliver fantastic products at a massive scale to realize this mission.

We are therefore seeking a Director of Software Engineering who will lead Axiom’s software team. You will guide the entire team to innovate, design, and execute our suite of refrigeration apps - with a focus on scale. You will directly contribute to delivering innovative, industry-changing solutions at this intersection of mission-critical physical equipment, cloud-native apps, predictive maintenance, and energy management.

Apply if you want to be the head of a highly talented, experienced, and motivated group of software engineers at a rapidly-growing, venture-backed startup (our customers already include 6 major North American grocery chains and refrigerated warehouse companies). Take the plunge if you want to put your passion for realizing a team’s highest potential to work. Play a pivotal role in transforming thousands of commercial/industrial cooling systems into intelligent energy-saving and self-healing assets. Join our <20-person team in our journey to make a truly meaningful and highly practical positive impact on climate change. 

What You’ll Do

Reporting to and working directly with the CTO, your remit will include the following responsibilities: 

• Software Engineering Leader
  • Lead Axiom’s software engineering efforts across multiple product areas and technology functions.
  • Lead the continued expansion of the team by sourcing, hiring, and retaining top talent.
  • Work with Principal Technologist to execute technology strategy
  • Guide, encourage, and challenge team members to reach their highest potential.
  • As their direct manager, be responsible for promoting professional development of all of the software engineering individual contributors.
  • Work directly with the CTO to build and maintain a strategic and tactical tech roadmap that tackles business needs and fundamental technology innovation.
  • Contribute to architecture and design efforts.
  • Support sales, operations and customer success teams as a key technical stakeholder, being able to explain technical concepts to nontechnical partners.
• Engineering Project Manager 
  • Define and implement the optimal level of Agile processes and project oversight to increase velocity and the overall quality / impact of the team’s work product.
  • Identify the critical engineering work that needs to be completed in order to deliver upcoming product development milestones. 
  • Tease out the risks and unknowns of product development projects and engineering work. 
  • Maintain product / technical documentation, planning and writing new documentation as products evolve.
  • Collaborate with the team to break down complex engineering work streams into smaller pieces, putting those pieces in roughly the most effective order they should be done, identifying which pieces can be done in parallel and which must be done in sequence.
  • Negotiate scope and priority of stories with product managers.
  • Translate product requirements to engineering specifications.
• This position is fully remote, with working hours generally aligned to Pacific time.

Who You Are

(Note: We want a diverse, global team, with a broad range of experience and perspectives. If you don’t meet 100% of the qualifications listed below, you should still seriously consider applying. Studies show that you can still be considered for a role if you meet just 50% of the role’s requirements.)

Required:

• 3+ years of engineering management experience, working cross-functionally with software engineering, QA, and design teams in a fast-paced environment, with a strong track record of creating world-class technology products.
• 3+ years of software engineering experience as an individual contributor. 
• Skills/technologies: Python 3.x, git / GitHub, Docker (containers, compose, orchestration, etc.), Linux / bash, Python unit and functional testing frameworks, microservices architecture, AWS administration, CI/CD, Jira, Confluence
• Strong technical background, enjoys researching new technologies and staying abreast of trends.
• Proven aptitude for assigning and delegating effectively to direct reports and ICs.
• A “full-spectrum” thinker, able to zoom into the critical details while also keeping high-level customer needs and business objectives front and center.

• Experience with Agile and Lean methodologies.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and proven ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical individuals.
• Collaborative team player with great listening skills and willingness to go above and beyond to get the job done.
• An enthusiastic self-starter who can work with minimal supervision and generates innovative solutions to tough problems.
• Continuous desire to hone your craft and learn/incorporate best practices.
• Passionate about technology innovation, developing and shipping real products, making customers happy, and making a real positive impact on climate change.
• Bachelors in a technical field or equivalent.

Great to have:

• Experience managing end-to-end product delivery, preferably in enterprise SaaS.
• Experience using analytics and other approaches to make decisions and increase product development velocity.
• Strong experience in developing and maintaining a strategic and tactical technology roadmap. 
• Proven experience in developing and protecting critical intellectual property.
• Skills/technologies: kubernetes, AWS Well-Architected Pillars, MLOps frameworks, machine learning, Data processing, modeling, and analytics tools (Pandas, Numpy, SciPy, Matplotlib, SageMaker, Grafana, Jupyter notebooks)
• Databases / storage: Timeseries (influxdb), noSQL (mongoDB, etc), object storage (S3), graph databases (neo4j, etc).
• Certified Scrum Master or similar.

What You Get

• Compensation in competitive base salary and generous equity.
• Access to a variety of group health insurance plans.
• Access to a competitive and efficient 401k.
• Access to more benefits as they become available.
• “Honor system” PTO policy (no specified limits), regular company-wide PTO, flexible work schedule, flexible maternity/paternity leave.

The Fine Print

• We’re a startup. The work is demanding, challenging, and fulfilling. The startup “roller coaster” will be emotionally draining at times and energizing at other times.
• We’ll make every effort to find an arrangement that works for the right candidate.