Software Engineer - Grid Services

Emerald AI•Oakland, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Grid Services team builds the intelligence that connects Emerald Conductor to the electric grid. As a Software Engineer on the Grid Services team, you'll develop the systems that enable data centers to participate in wholesale electricity markets and demand response programs. You'll build software that ingests grid and market signals, forecasts system behavior, determines available load flexibility, and executes reliable dispatch across utilities, ISOs/RTOs, and energy market operators. This role combines distributed systems engineering with optimization, forecasting, and energy market expertise. Much of the challenge lies in translating complex market rules - including capacity accreditation, baseline methodologies, settlement, and performance requirements - into reliable production software. Small implementation mistakes can have significant operational and financial consequences. As one of the early engineers on the team, you'll help define the architecture, own major technical decisions, and work closely with control systems, platform, and AI infrastructure teams to turn grid-side decisions into real-world data center actions.

Requirements

7+ years of software engineering experience building production systems in Python
Strong experience designing and operating reliable, distributed software systems where correctness and availability are critical
Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines
Experience building data pipelines and working with large-scale operational datasets
Familiarity with SQL and modern data engineering practices
Experience in electric utilities, ISOs/RTOs, wholesale electricity markets, demand response, or adjacent energy systems
Excellent communication and collaboration skills
Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related quantitative field

Nice To Haves

Experience with PJM, ERCOT, SPP and/or CAISO markets
Experience with optimization frameworks (OR-Tools, Gurobi, CPLEX, Pyomo, cvxpy)
Experience building, deploying and monitoring machine learning models for time-series prediction
Experience with industrial communication protocols common in the energy sector (DNP3, ICCP, IEEE 2030.5, OpenADR)
Experience integrating with SCADA or other industrial control systems
Familiarity with NERC/FERC reliability standards and market compliance
Experience building settlement, measurement & verification (M&V), or baseline calculation systems
Experience with Rust, C++, or other systems programming languages
Startup experience or a track record of thriving in highly ambiguous environments

Responsibilities

Design and build software integrations with ISOs/RTOs, utilities, aggregators, and demand response platforms.
Develop optimization and control algorithms that determine when and how data center resources including compute workloads, on-site generation, and storage are dispatched in response to grid signals
Build forecasting models for electricity demand, data center load, prices and grid conditions to support market participation and dispatch decisions.
Translate wholesale market and demand response program rules including capacity accreditation, baselines, measurement & verification (M&V), settlement, and compliance into operational software
Build reliable data pipelines that ingest, validate, and process real-time operational and market data.
Own software services from design through deployment, monitoring, and long-term operation.