About Openvolt

Openvolt is building the API for Energy. Our aspiration is to create the underlying data infrastructure that will enable a new wave of innovators to accelerate the energy transition. We are currently focused on unlocking access to smart meter data across Europe. Specifically we integrate with smart meter data hubs and enable our clients, other software companies, to easily and compliantly access this data. Our plans for Openvolt go well beyond this and we're seeking a Founding Engineer to help continue our growth in this impactful market.

What would you be doing?

We are building APIs and infrastructure for other developers specifically in the area of Energy. This means we spend time integrating with data sources across Europe (think central Electricity and Gas data stores, environmental data such as weather, carbon intensity, solar irradiance sources etc). This can be scrappy work with vast amounts of data we need to store and structure, and then make available through a world class Stripe-like API for developers. As a product engineer, you could be working across one or all of the following areas

Data connections - Connecting into central data sources or distributed energy resources (DERs) both synchronously and asynchronously. Blocking and tackling to get the initial connections working but then building scalable infrastructure to handle large volumes of data reliably.
Storage and retrieval - Interval energy data is typically very large volumes, so storing this efficiently and making it available with very low latency is key to our services
Developer API - We are trying to build a Stripe-like API for the Energy industry. We believe this developer experience is unique to this industry and will unlock enormous potential for new climate tech companies
Dashboards - Openvolt is and engine that runs 24/7, powering the future climate tech companies of our time. We are building developer dashboards that allow these companies debug their integrations and monitor events. We are also building dashboards for ops type folks within these companies to ensure the platform is operating effectively. Again, think Stripe dashboard on top of the API.

What do we value in a team member?

✅ Founder mindset. At this early stage, we index higher on the right attitude over technical skills. This doesn’t mean the technical bar is low (it isn’t) but your impact on the company and yourself will be far higher if you’re approaching Openvolt in the right way. We want people who are constantly thinking about product velocity, customer value and team culture versus excitement around the latest tech stack.
✅ Scrappy and rigorous. These values may sound like they’re in conflict but it’s when you use each skill is important. Let’s take a new country integration as an example. As a product engineer you will often be working with integration documentation that is in a different language, where the authentication processes (digital certificates for example) are not documented, where test environments are flaky. It takes a scrappy engineer to block and tackle their way through these setup stages. However, once this is done we need to provide scalability and reliability for our users as they interact with our API. We have to provide the concrete foundation for our users as we ourselves work with not so robust integrations.
✅ Accountable. We are not a top heavy engineering team with lots of manager and project management. In fact, we mean to be light in this area as we believe this empowers the right type of people at this stage of the company. However, this means accountability for delivery lies with you. In a small startup, impact is quite binary — either you get the job done or it doesn’t get done, so there’s not a lot of places to hide. Stakes are higher in this type of org so you’re a little closer to the metal than say a larger tech company.
✅ Full-stack skillset. Our product is both an infrastructure product but has both API and UI access. We see one of our unique propositions around bringing a Stripe like level to our API and a B2C consumer level of professionalism to our UIs. Our team is not yet at a size and scale to truly specialise between front-end and back-end nor do our current team want to specialise. Even though each of them come from a specific area, they love stretching into the other areas of the stack. This keeps the learning and knowledge transfer high across the team. We use typescript extensively both on the front-end and back-end. The current front-end is a mixture of Vue and React, with a future direction towards React. Backend is Node Express with MongoDB, Postgres and TimescaleDB for time-series data.
✅ Remote ready. Openvolt is a fully remote organisation. This works out great for folks who are truly set up for working remotely but is tough if you’re not. What this means in practice is you’re fully set up operationally, you’re used to working and contributing to the culture of a remote organisation. This also means we over index on transparency and written communications especially on decisions that potentially affect others either now or in the future. Slack is our office space and we want folks engaged and connected with each other even though they are fully remote. We get to spend in-person time as a team once every 3 months, normally in an AirBnB somewhere in Europe, to build on existing relationships and recharge the batteries
We also believe that engineers within their first few years of industry should really be in an office to learn faster on how to succeed in a professional environment. For this reason, we will index more towards candidates who have already worked in the professional/office world and have chosen to work remotely thereafter.

Fully remote work from any European location

Competitive market based salary
Founding Engineers get a % stake in the company. We want you to feel like true owners of the business
Build something that will make a difference in the world
Front seat with the founders. You’ll be exposed to all of the messiness, excitement and learning of a high potential startup

Openvolt remote jobs

Product Marketing Lead

Founding Engineer