Backend Developer

Number of employees

3800

United States, Remote, United States

Posted on: 2022-11-30

Category: energy

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Expired

Employment type:

Full time

Remote?

Yes

Experience required:

Intermediate

Salary

Salary not provided

About the company:

We're on a mission to make a big green dent in the universe by building a truly sustainable energy system globally.

That means making power greener, smarter, and more affordable for everyone.

We put customers at the heart of everything we do: with always-fair prices, transparency and outrageous customer service.

We drive system change: with transformative tech to make renewable energy the norm and end global reliance on fossil fuels.

Octopus Energy Group is made up of 10 businesses spanning 6 countries across 3 continents, including: Octopus Energy Retail, Kraken Technologies, Octopus Energy Generation, Kraken Flex, Octopus Electric Vehicles, and the Octopus Centre for Net Zero. More on OEG @ octopusenergy.group

Welcome to the future of energy

We are both an electricity retailer and a tech platform and we think there is no better way to address our greatest challenge, climate change, than with the combination of those two.

Through our proprietary tech platform, Kraken, we are changing the way people interact with their energy company - by making it approachable, low cost, easy-to-understand, and most importantly, 100% renewable.  We’ve distinguished ourselves by being named 2020’s Energy Provider of the Year, which highlights our commitment to exceptional customer service. In many markets we are a leading employer on Glassdoor for best places to work.

Our team
We are the latest acquisition of Octopus Energy, so our tech team needs to grow fast!

We follow a Kanban-like approach, using Google docs, BaseCamp, and Asana to specify and manage work; Github, CircleCI and Terraform Enterprise as part of an immutable-infrastructure, continuous delivery pipeline; and Loggly, Sentry and Cloudwatch to measure performance and monitor production.

Engineering standards are high. We thoroughly review and test code before it deploys, and maintain fast, high-value test suites. We have weekly tech talks, monthly blitz-days (eg sharpening our internal tools, upgrading dependencies) and can often be found at tech meet-ups and conferences.

Octopus is a great place to learn, work with some talented engineers and level-up your skills.

Our technology
On the server-side, we mainly use Python. Most of our websites are powered by Django and the Django-REST-framework. We also use Pandas, Numpy and Jupyter for analysis and forecasting, plus Celery, RabbitMQ, SQS and Airflow for background processing.

We use AWS heavily, employing most of the "Hashistack" (eg Packer, Consul, Terraform) as part of a continuous deployment pipeline. See, for example, Django, ELB health checks and continuous delivery.

Client-side, we use React, Redux and SASS; our mobile apps are built using React Native.

We would prefer someone who can work post-pandemic in our Houston office. For those who want to work within the USA, we cannot sponsor H1 visas at this time.

Above all, we’re looking for someone who thrives on providing alternative opinions, challenging those around them and being challenged.

If this sounds like you then we'd love to hear from you.

Studies have shown that some groups of people, like women, are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet 100% of the job requirements. Whoever you are, if you like one of our jobs, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we hire. Across Octopus, we're looking for genuinely decent people who are honest and empathetic. Our people are our strongest asset and the unique skills and perspectives people bring to the team are the driving force of our success. As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute. Our commitment is to provide equal opportunities, an inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone.


What you'll do

  • We have lots of difficult design challenges to solve. The US energy market is complicated, outdated and process-heavy - there's a lot of domain modelling that we need to get right. Strong attention to detail is essential.
  • We have difficult technical problems to solve. With the advent of smart meters, we'll soon be processing millions of meter readings a day. We need the right technology in place to handle this smoothly as well as feeding data into a machine learning pipeline that models and predicts consumption.
  • Often, we can only give you the question and not the answer, because if we knew the answer, we wouldn’t be hiring - are you someone who not only finds answers but creates value by coming back and asking better questions?
  • There's a great opportunity for disruption in the US energy market. The big suppliers still dominate, but are not popular. The energy landscape is changing as we move to more dis-aggregated forms of generation, with less predictability, more dynamism and smarter technology. Octopus Energy were the first UK supplier to introduce a "tracker" tariff whose prices track the daily wholesale prices: http://www.cleanenergynews.co.uk/news/efficiency/octopus-offers-transparency-with-wholesale-price-tariff
  • You'll be working for a company that’s fighting climate change. Our parent company is the largest investor in solar generation in the UK, and are funding wind and anaerobic digestion. As a supplier, we're helping people to use greener technology and renewable energy, all helping move the UK towards a lower carbon future.
  • What you'll have

  • A minimum of 3 years of professional python software development experience is required.
  • General interest in technology and problem-solving; Diligent and thoughtful.
  • Good communication skills
  • Python
  • Django
  • Django REST Framework
  • Domain modelling
  • HTTP and REST APIs
  • Writing robust and fault-tolerant software
  • Celery and async processing
  • Postgres
  • Legally able to work within the USA
  • Plus experience in the following would be a bonus:
  • AWS
  • Terraform, Packer, Consul
  • React and Redux
  • Professional understanding of the US energy domain
  • What you'll love about us

  • Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options including FSAs
  • Unlimited paid time off — we know working hard means also being able to recharge as needed, we trust our employees to get the work done and take the time they need.. 
  • 401(k) plan with employer match: 
  • Parental leave. Biological, adoptive and foster parents are all eligible. 
  • Pre-tax commuter benefits.
  • Flexible working environment: you need to shift around your schedule? You do you, we genuinely believe in work/life balance. 
  • Equity Options: every Octopus employee owns part of the business. We’re a team, working together towards huge goals. Every person is crucial to our success, you should be rewarded as such. 
  • Modern office or co-working spaces depending on location.
  • The salary range for this position is ~$100K-$150K (with a certain degree of flexibility) depending on level of experience.
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