Vice President, Engineering

Uplight•Boulder, CO

1d•Remote

About The Position

Uplight is creating a new category of energy. We make software that manages energy resources in homes and businesses—including things like smart thermostats, electric vehicles, solar panels, storage batteries, heat pumps, and even people’s behavior—to generate, shift, or save energy to balance the grid, making it more efficient and reliable. This creates clean energy capacity that can be used by the power grid instead of burning more fossil fuels. Our solutions accelerate the transition to clean energy and save money for energy customers. We are looking for a VP, Engineering to drive our company forward and help us lead the clean energy revolution!

Requirements

10+ years of engineering leadership experience in software/SaaS environments, including 5+ years managing managers and directors in global or distributed teams.
A proven ability to scale engineering organizations while maintaining team engagement, high-quality output, and technical rigor.
Demonstrated success delivering complex, data-driven, cloud-native products across hybrid architectures (GCP and/or AWS preferred).
Hands-on experience with large-scale cloud migrations, technical debt remediation, or replatforming legacy systems to modern architectures.
Deep understanding of data infrastructure and modern data engineering practices, including Databricks, MLOps, and Lakehouse/Medallion data patterns.
Strong systems thinking and architectural experience with full-stack applications, distributed systems, and infrastructure reliability.
Effective collaborator and communicator, able to influence at the executive level and foster alignment across technical and non-technical teams.
Commitment to agile values, lean delivery, and building empowered, customer-focused teams.
Passion for climate tech, energy systems, and the impact of software in decarbonizing the grid.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting SaaS products for regulated industries or public sector clients, especially utilities.
Background in machine learning platform engineering, observability, or cost optimization in hybrid cloud environments.
Experience in data privacy, security, or compliance (SOC 2, GDPR, etc.) as it relates to engineering practices.
Familiarity with behavioral science, user engagement, or DER orchestration platforms.

Responsibilities

Finish foundational technology transitions currently underway, with AWS Migration and Project Upgrade serving as the key enablers for our forward-looking technology roadmap.
Establish a clear long-term technology strategy that eliminates complexity, unifies duplicate systems (e.g., standardizing CI/CD, consolidating variants like Flex on Databricks), and removes low-value work.
Partner closely with Product, Strategy & Operations, Cyber Security, and customer-facing teams to align engineering capacity with the company's highest-value technical and commercial opportunities.
Drive predictable execution, clear technical planning, and estimation discipline without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Partner with the Sr. Director of AI and Architecture to establish an AI-first engineering mindset, transforming how we build software and leveling up our team to leverage AI effectively to innovate, boost productivity, and reduce OPEX.
Own key outcome-driven metrics, with an emphasis on measuring efficiency, outcomes, and reliability across the products and teams.
Maintain high technical, architectural, and reliability standards across platform modernization, MLOps, Databricks Lakehouse architecture, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure.
Build and enable a truly distributed global engineering organization with full authority to make in-region decisions at the highest level.
Partner directly with the India Country Manager to empower and build strong in-region leadership, driving local decision-making and operational excellence.
Develop a strong layer of Directors and Engineering Managers through mentorship and clear succession planning to prepare Uplight for its next stage of growth.
Address organizational and performance issues decisively and fairly while fostering an inclusive, high-accountability, and psychologically safe engineering culture.