Senior Engineer - New York

Eli • New York, NY

9h • $180,000 - $215,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Eli is building a better system to manage energy efficiency programs, which are currently bogged down by manual processes and disconnected systems. The company's platform streamlines operations for utilities, government agencies, and their partners, handling everything from project qualification and documentation review to reporting and payments. Eli also provides advance payments to contractors through a credit facility, improving their cash flow. Since its launch in December 2023, Eli has processed hundreds of thousands of projects and advanced nearly $50 million to contractors, and is now scaling to handle greater volumes.

This Senior Engineer role is a critical position within the engineering team, working directly with the co-founders. The role involves building and owning significant parts of the system, with work frequently deployed to production within days. The position is based in New York, with potential for fully remote accommodation for the right candidate. The engineering team is small and highly collaborative, with a unique approach to development that heavily utilizes AI agents for code generation while emphasizing human judgment for critical decision-making, problem-solving, and system ownership.

Requirements

• Strong engineering skills with a focus on debugging from first principles, proficiency in Git (including rebase), and a comprehensive understanding of the request lifecycle from browser to database.
• Extensive use of AI agents for coding while maintaining authorship and understanding, being able to defend all lines of code and their testing.
• A problem-solving mindset, measuring success by problems solved rather than tickets closed.
• A strong understanding of the business, including rebate programs, underwriting, and contractor payments, with the ability to push back on incorrect specifications.
• Comfort and competence in compliance- and security-heavy environments, with experience handling personal and financial data and adhering to audit requirements (e.g., SOC 2).
• Ability to write concise and clear updates on progress, blockers, and timelines.
• Strong opinions about development tools and the ability to articulate their rationale.
• 6+ years of experience building production software, including experience as the primary owner of a system during incidents.
• Deep expertise in backend TypeScript (Bun, Node, Next.js, tRPC, Prisma or similar).
• Solid relational database skills in MySQL or Postgres, including schema design, query plan analysis, and migrations.
• A proven track record of taking initiative on work outside of assigned areas and completing it.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Temporal or other workflow engines.
• Experience with payments, ledgers, lending, or reconciliation.
• Experience with dbt, Snowflake, or other analytics tooling.
• Experience evaluating LLM output using test sets and metrics.
• Familiarity with infrastructure tools like Pulumi, Docker, Vercel, Tailscale, Datadog, Sentry.
• Experience with energy programs or utility software.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of product features from conception to deployment, including understanding user needs, building solutions, monitoring performance, and iterating.
• Develop and refine AI-driven systems for critical functions like document verification, eligibility checks, and fraud detection, determining the appropriate use of models, rules, or human oversight.
• Manage and ensure the accuracy of financial movements, including the ledger, loan reporting, and bank reconciliation, ensuring precision to the cent for audit purposes.
• Improve and consolidate internal tooling, migrating from systems like Airtable to in-house, agentic tools for operations and program configuration.
• Maintain and enhance the platform's infrastructure and production environment, including CI speed, test suite health, backups, database migrations, alerts, and workflows, with a focus on root cause analysis and documentation when issues arise.

Benefits

• Base salary range of $180,000 - $215,000 annually, depending on experience.
• Meaningful equity package.
• Generous medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Flexible, unlimited time off, with a minimum of three weeks encouraged.
• At least two company gatherings each year.
• Budget to co-work when solving difficult problems together.
• A welcoming, family- and parent-friendly environment that values humility, honesty, and humor.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed