Director, Power Applications

Karman•Ann Arbor, MI

1d•Remote

About The Position

Karman is an AI company applying AI to the electric grid and data centers. Its Karman platform, built on a custom NVIDIA module, helps data center operators better use available power. The Power Applications team develops and maintains applications that use power-orchestration algorithms to manage power and issue real-time control actions in megawatt-scale data centers. The team combines research and development with continuous software delivery, turning live telemetry into power-management commands and moving validated capabilities into production. The Director, Power Applications leads the team across research and development and continuous delivery, reporting to the VP of AI and Applications. The role connects research with implementation: framing ambiguous research work to produce timely decisions, moving results into production deliberately, and using field performance to inform future research. The Director leads technical staff, manages planning and reporting, partners with Product and technical program management on roadmap commitments, and makes trade-offs among delivery, research, demonstrations, and proof points explicit. The role also manages dependencies on neighbouring teams, especially data products and the actuation path, and represents the team to leadership, customers, and partners. This is a technical leadership role whose impact comes from developing technical leads, maintaining standards, running the program, and coordinating cross-functional work. The team is growing, and the first year includes hiring and establishing the structure, routines, and boundaries needed for the team to scale.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, physics, electrical, mechanical, or aerospace engineering, or a related quantitative field.
10+ years building and shipping software or algorithms for physical or real-time systems.
5+ years leading teams of senior engineers and scientists, with a record of hiring and developing people.
Experience leading or directing a research or data science function, including framing open-ended questions as decisions with deadlines, setting evidence standards, and moving results into production.
Experience leading a software delivery program on production systems with release gates, reviews, and operational ownership, and exercising sound judgment about quality under schedule pressure.
Sufficient depth in control systems, estimation, optimization, or applied statistics to challenge principal-level engineers and scientists and understand the overall program.
Strong planning and program management skills, including setting milestones with Product and program management, managing cross-team dependencies, and communicating trade-offs to leadership.
Excellent written and verbal communication across product, engineering, and executive audiences.
Remote leadership habits including proactive communication, thorough documentation, empathy, and assuming good intent.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree (MS or PhD) or equivalent research experience in control, estimation, optimization, applied mathematics, statistics, robotics, or a related field.
Hands-on experience with real-time or closed-loop control software on physical equipment and fleet operations, including staged rollouts, observability, and on-call.
Background in power systems, data center electrical infrastructure, energy, or another physical-world real-time domain.
Experience with GPU power management tooling, LLM inference serving, or edge computing on NVIDIA platforms.
Experience in a growth-stage company, including scaling a team, introducing process and structure as it grows, and treating the roadmap as a contract between Product and Engineering.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end lifecycle of Karman's power control and orchestration applications, from research to production performance.
Manage and develop the team's technical leads, data scientists, algorithms engineers, and software engineers.
Set the research agenda with the research technical lead, balancing technical direction against business needs and resources.
Set research decision deadlines, define what completion means, and make evidence-based decisions to pivot, shelve, or double down.
Deliver the product plan of record with the software technical lead, maintaining quality standards, release gates, and operational ownership.
Own the handoff between research and implementation in both directions, including experiment environments and workflows that support research.
Serve as the single point of contact for planning and reporting with Product and program management.
Balance the product roadmap, technical roadmap, and requests for proof points and demonstrations, clearly stating trade-offs and costs.
Manage interfaces with neighbouring teams, including data products, actuation, and system architecture.
Hire for open roles and build the structure and routines that allow the team to scale.