VP of Engineering

Optiwatt•San Francisco, CA

23d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our mission: Optiwatt’s mission is to reverse global warming through decarbonizing the electric grid by connecting and managing the electricity usage from electric vehicles and other smart energy devices. We make home energy usage cheaper, greener, and simpler by building towards the world’s largest network of connected and intelligent electric devices to balance the electric grid. Our investors are some of the most active impact investing firms out there, and we hold ourselves accountable to each other and the future generations of this planet. Do you want to straddle the intersection of technology and purpose on our growth trajectory to 1,000,000 homes and beyond? We hope so. Your impact: As our first VP of Engineering, you will be instrumental in scaling our R&D organization, enhancing our engineering practices, and directly contributing to Optiwatt's rapid growth. You will lead and mentor our talented team of 11 IC engineers and 2 engineering managers, fostering a high-performance culture that delivers innovative, scalable products to achieve our ambitious business goals and decarbonization mission. Your leadership will directly impact our product roadmap, operational efficiency, and the overall health and productivity of our engineering function. As the VP of Engineering, you must be located in the Bay Area and be willing to work from our Walnut Creek office 3 days a week in person with the CEO.

Requirements

A Results-Driven Engineering Leader: Possess deep knowledge and extensive experience within high-performing engineering environments. You instinctively know what "good looks like" and have a proven track record of successfully building and scaling engineering teams of 20+ individuals, developing multiple engineers into high performers. You are decisive in addressing performance gaps, knowing when to coach, performance manage, or make difficult personnel changes.
A Business-Oriented Technologist: A true thought partner to the business team, you have a solid understanding of business objectives and can seamlessly translate them into product roadmaps, epics, and engineering tickets. You excel at cross-functional collaboration with Product, Sales, Client Success, and Finance. You are adept at negotiating with business stakeholders to balance the development of scalable products with immediate business needs, always finding the right balance between new feature development and managing technical debt.
A Startup Operator: Capable of getting things done in days/weeks, not months/quarters. You possess a strong understanding of relevant agile practices (sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives) and modern DevOps principles (CI/CD, release management, cloud-native architecture, automation, DORA metrics). You are skilled at right-sizing these practices for a Series A/B startup environment and have experience building products for both B2C and B2B markets.
A Strong Leader & Culture Builder: You are highly respected by your team, who are eager to learn and grow under your guidance. You are adept at building a positive and engaging engineering culture that keeps the team motivated, happy, and committed to Optiwatt's mission.
A Master of Structured Planning & Delivery: You are highly skilled at developing structured plans, executing against them with precision, and reporting on progress in a clear and concise manner. You proactively identify and remove blockers to ensure the team remains on track and delivers consistently.

Responsibilities

Define and Optimize R&D Metrics: Establish and implement a robust system to measure and report on R&D productivity and system health, ensuring clear visibility into our performance.
Drive Engineering Productivity: Lead initiatives to increase the productivity of the R&D team by streamlining processes and optimizing workflows.
Define Platform Strategy: Define and implement the technical strategy for building and scaling our platform, ensuring it supports current and future product needs and business growth.
Champion AI Integration: Develop and execute a comprehensive AI strategy aimed at automating a significant percentage of testing and development work within your first year.
Strategic Product Partnership: Collaborate closely with business stakeholders to shape the product roadmap, aligning engineering efforts with company objectives to drive ARR growth

Benefits

Ability to work hybrid (can work from home 2 days per week)
Meaningful Stock options package
Healthcare, vision, and dental
$1,500 annual health & wellness purchase match
401k contribution and matching - 50% match up to 6% of base salary
Flex Fridays every other Friday
Flexible time off policy (no cap on days off as long as required work gets completed)
Yearly company retreats
Flexible work hours, and we mean it. We want you to work when you are most productive, no matter if you are a night owl, early bird, or live in a different US time zone.
Expensed home office supplies, work travel, team entertainment, etc. as necessary