Job Title: Director of Energy AI Engineering (Startup)
Location: San Jose, California
Reports To: CEO
Industry: AI, Energy Management, Grid Software, Distributed Energy Resources (DER)
Immigration status: Only green card or US citizens
Compensation: Startup role with attractive equity and and benefits. This is an opportunity to be part of the core team building a company.
Read: It’s our first senior leader hire. Must be experienced in building digital twins of energy systems and use AI for energy orchestration decision making. Deep technical and hands-on. The position can be any level and co-founder option is open for a suitable candidate and No recruiters please.
About the Company
We are building the next generation of AI-powered energy infrastructure. Our platform combines artificial intelligence, digital twins, edge computing, and real-time optimization to enable utilities, data centers, commercial facilities, microgrids, and distributed energy assets to operate autonomously, efficiently, and securely.
We are looking for an exceptional engineering leader who wants to build technology using state of the art tools. This role is designed for someone who can grow into VP or CTO roles as the company grows.
Position Summary
The Director of Engineering will lead product development, engineering execution, and technical strategy while building a world-class engineering organization. This individual will work closely with the CEO to translate business strategy into an innovative technology roadmap.
The ideal candidate has strong software architecture and AI experience combined with enough electrical engineering and control systems knowledge to effectively lead multidisciplinary teams developing intelligent energy management platforms.
This is a hands-on leadership role during the company's growth phase.
Key Responsibilities
Engineering Leadership
- Build and lead a high-performing software engineering organization.
- Recruit, mentor, and retain exceptional engineers.
- Establish engineering culture, development processes, and best practices.
- Create an environment focused on innovation, quality, and rapid execution.
- Develop future engineering leaders.
Technical Strategy
- Define and execute the company's technology roadmap.
- Partner with product management to prioritize development.
- Make architectural decisions that support long-term scalability.
- Balance technical excellence with startup execution speed.
Product Development
Lead development of:
- AI-based energy optimization platform
- Cloud-native SaaS applications
- Edge AI software
- Digital twin technologies
- Real-time analytics
- Optimization engines
- Device management platforms
- APIs and customer integrations
Software Architecture
Drive architecture for:
- Distributed systems
- Cloud infrastructure
- Kubernetes
- Microservices
- Event-driven architectures
- Data platforms
- AI/ML pipelines
- Edge computing
- Cybersecurity
- High-availability systems
Energy Technology Leadership
Work with domain experts on:
- Distributed Energy Resources (DER)
- Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)
- Solar PV
- EV charging infrastructure
- Building energy systems
- Microgrids
- Utility integration
- Grid operations
A deep power systems background is not required, but the ability to understand electrical engineering concepts and collaborate effectively with power engineers is essential.
AI and Data
Lead development of:
- Forecasting models
- Optimization algorithms
- Reinforcement learning applications
- Predictive maintenance
- Digital twin models
- Time-series analytics
- Energy forecasting
- Grid intelligence
Required Qualifications
- BS or MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- 2+ years leading small engineering team.
- Experience scaling engineering organizations from startup through growth stage.
- Strong background in cloud software development.
- Experience building SaaS platforms.
- Experience with modern software architecture.
- Strong understanding of DevOps and CI/CD.
- Experience deploying production AI/ML systems.
- Excellent communication and leadership skills.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with one or more of:
- Energy software
- Utility software
- Smart grid
- Microgrids
- Industrial IoT
- Edge computing
- SCADA
- Energy Management Systems (EMS)
- Building Management Systems (BMS)
- Industrial automation
- Control systems
- Real-time operating systems
Knowledge of technologies such as:
- Python
- Go
- Java
- C++
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- MQTT
- OPC UA
- Modbus
- NIST
- FEDRAMP
- IEC 61850
- REST APIs
- PostgreSQL
- Time-series databases
- Machine Learning frameworks
Leadership Attributes
The successful candidate will:
- Think strategically while remaining hands-on.
- Enjoy solving difficult technical problems.
- Build teams that outperform larger competitors.
- Make pragmatic engineering decisions.
- Communicate effectively with customers, investors, and partners.
- Thrive in ambiguity and move quickly.
- Be comfortable working across software, AI, cloud, and energy technologies.
- Inspire engineers through technical credibility and servant leadership.
Success Metrics (First 24 Months)
- Deliver the first commercial release of the AI energy platform.
- Achieve >99.9% platform availability.
- Deploy customer pilots with utilities, data centers, and commercial customers.
- Establish scalable engineering processes and development practices.
- Build a technology roadmap supporting growth to enterprise scale.
- Develop intellectual property and patentable innovations.
- Position the engineering organization for rapid expansion.
Career Path
This role is intentionally designed as the company's CTO succession path. The successful candidate will progressively assume responsibility for:
- Company-wide technology strategy
- Engineering organization
- Product architecture
- AI and data strategy
- Technology partnerships
- Intellectual property
- Technical due diligence with investors
- Customer technical leadership
- Executive leadership
Ideal Candidate Profile
We're looking for a builder rather than a maintainer, someone who has successfully taken software products from concept to commercial deployment and is excited by the challenge of applying AI to transform the energy industry. The ideal candidate combines deep software engineering expertise with enough understanding of electrical systems and controls to lead multidisciplinary teams, communicate effectively with energy domain experts, and ultimately shape the technology vision of a fast-growing AI energy company.
Pay: $100,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
