CleanCounts is hiring an API Support Analyst to join our Customer Support team. This is a technical, customer-facing role focused on helping API customers integrate with and troubleshoot the M-RETS registry, and on keeping the public documentation those customers depend on accurate and current. The right person can read a request payload, interpret an error response, and explain the fix in plain language, and likes helping people succeed with software.
Why This Role Matters
Our API is used by utilities, corporate buyers, brokers, and data aggregators to interact with the M-RETS registry programmatically: creating accounts, querying certificates, submitting transactions, and pulling registry data into their own systems. As that usage grows and we formalize how third-party integrators and service providers access the platform, we need someone who can meet customers where they are, resolve real integration problems, and feed what they learn back to engineering. The patterns this role surfaces directly shape how the platform improves.
About CleanCounts
CleanCounts is a 501(c)(4) non-profit that owns and manages an energy attribute certificate and thermal energy certificate tracking system. Our platform is used by Fortune 25 companies, utilities, and regulators, and we support our mission through software that promotes environmental markets and energy sector decarbonization. You will work on projects that matter and help infuse the market with enhanced data and information.
Workplace
Our teams are distributed across North and South America. For team members in Minneapolis, we operate with regular 9-5 hours and a hybrid workplace, with our physical office in the Baker Center in downtown Minneapolis. This role is open to candidates based in Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia, Illinois, or New York, and remote team members travel to Minneapolis three to four times a year for collaboration. We're deeply committed to our clean energy mission, but we're also collaborative, a little nerdy, and genuinely easy to work with.
Job Responsibilities
API Technical Support
- Serve as the primary point of contact for customers integrating with or troubleshooting the M-RETS REST API (JSON:API specification)
- Investigate reported issues end to end: reproduce the problem, interpret request and response payloads, review relevant logs and APM data, and determine whether the cause is a customer implementation issue or a platform defect
- Use internal tooling (read-only database dashboards on Aurora/PostgreSQL, Scout APM, and CloudWatch logs) to investigate thoroughly before escalating to engineering
- Guide customers through authentication setup, endpoint usage, request construction, and interpreting HTTP status codes and error responses
- Advise customers on API best practices: rate limiting and backoff, correct use of pagination, avoiding tight polling loops, handling errors gracefully, and building resilient integrations
- Relay recurring API friction points to engineering with enough context to act on, and escalate confirmed bugs with a clear reproduction case and impact summary
- Manage the customer-facing side of API access: guide prospective integrators through access requests, credential issuance, sandbox testing, and the registration and agreement steps required before production access
- Support onboarding and review of third-party service providers, including completeness checks on registration materials and helping customers set up, modify, and revoke delegated access
- Monitor API usage patterns and flag anomalies (unusual volume, tight polling, or access that suggests unregistered third-party activity) for follow-up under our API terms of use
General Customer Support and Triage
- Work a share of the general Client Services queue in HelpScout (account setup, registry navigation, transaction questions, reporting issues) with the same care as API tickets
- Build familiarity with registry operating procedures and keep up with platform changes that affect access and client usage
- Triage incoming tickets: categorize, prioritize, resolve what you can directly, and route the rest to the right owner within our response-time targets
- Follow and help improve team workflows in HelpScout (saved replies, tagging conventions, linked help articles, escalation paths)
- Communicate in CleanCounts' voice: plain language, accurate, and respectful of the customer's time, whether the reader is a Fortune 25 sustainability team or a single-facility generator
- Expected split is roughly 70% API support and 30% general customer support, flexing with queue volume
Documentation and Knowledge Sharing
- Maintain and expand internal runbooks covering common API support scenarios, investigation steps, and known edge cases
- Contribute customer-facing guidance on API best practices (pagination, rate limiting, idempotency, error handling, efficient integration patterns)
- Help onboard new API consumers by reviewing their integration approach and flagging potential issues before they become tickets
- Keep the public API documentation accurate and useful, flagging gaps or inaccuracies surfaced through support work
- Maintain the public GitHub repository for our API documentation: keep content current, review proposed changes, maintain working examples, and respond to issues and questions raised there
- Maintain customer-facing help articles for API and registry topics, retiring stale content and filling gaps surfaced by tickets
- Help communicate API changes to integrators: release notes, deprecation notices, and migration guidance aligned with our published versioning policy
- All other duties as assigned
Qualifications and Requirements
Technical
- 2 to 4 years in a technical support, integration support, or API support role
- Solid working knowledge of REST API concepts: HTTP methods, status codes, headers, request and response structure, and API key authentication
- Familiarity with JSON, ideally some exposure to the JSON:API specification (sparse fieldsets, compound documents, filtering, pagination)
- Comfortable using Postman or cURL to construct and debug API requests independently
- Able to navigate logs and use database queries to investigate issues
- Understands rate limiting, pagination, polling patterns, and webhooks well enough to advise customers on correct usage
- Basic working comfort with Git and GitHub
Customer Support and Team
- 2+ years in a customer-facing support role, with written communication that adapts to the reader's technical level
- Experience with HelpScout or a comparable ticketing platform (Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom), and the discipline to keep tickets tagged, documented, and within SLA
- Sound judgment about escalation: when to dig deeper, when to hand off, and how to write a handoff the next person can act on
- Patience and empathy with non-technical customers, including the ability to de-escalate without overpromising
- Genuine interest in renewable energy and clean energy markets. Expertise on day one is not required, but we expect most people take 6 to 12 months to feel fully comfortable in this domain, and we plan for that
- Collaborative; comfortable sharing credit, asking for help, and working with people across teams
- Takes ownership of work and follows through on commitments
- Comfortable operating with moderate structure (we have processes, but we expect people to use judgment)
- Support of and interest in the CleanCounts/M-RETS mission
Bonus Traits
- Prior experience supporting or consuming JSON:API-spec APIs
- Familiarity with the Rails ecosystem or Ruby applications
- Experience using AWS CloudWatch or similar log tooling for investigation
- Experience with docs-as-code workflows or maintaining public developer documentation
- Familiarity with developer community channels
- Background in energy, environmental, or sustainability space
Additional Information
Reports To: Head of Registry & Market Integrity
Salary Range: $89,000 - $128,000 annually
Employment Type: Full-Time, Exempt
Location: Minneapolis, MN; Greater Twin Cities Metro Area - Hybrid; or remote from Michigan, Virginia, Illinois, or New York
Travel Requirements: Remote team members travel to Minneapolis three to four times per year
Work Requirements: Must be legally authorized to work in the US. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide sponsorship opportunities at this time.
Equal Employment Opportunity
CleanCounts does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity/expression), national origin, marital status, familial status, status with regard to public assistance, disability, age, membership on a local human rights commission, and sexual orientation, or any other class protected by federal, state, or local law. This policy applies to all aspects of the application process and employment relationship, including, but not limited to hiring, promotion, transfer, demotion, termination, discipline, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment.
Benefits:
- 401(k) with employer contribution (7% company contribution, no employee match required)
- Paid Time Off starting at 20 days per year
- Paid holidays
- Health stipend
- Communications stipend
- Parking/Transportation reimbursement
- Professional development budget
- Family and medical leave
- Life insurance
- Short-term and long-term disability coverage
Pay: $89,000.00 - $128,000.00 per year
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Minneapolis, MN 55402
