Solution Engineer - Structural Design

Neara is a software technology company that provides a physics-enabled digital twin platform specifically designed for electric utility infrastructure. The platform enables utilities to create a behaviourally identical digital model of their entire network, integrating assets, surrounding terrain, weather conditions, and vegetation into a single physics-accurate environment. This allows network operators to simulate real-world scenarios including severe weather events, wildfires, floods, and equipment failures to understand risk, predict outcomes, and prioritize interventions before incidents occur. Neara's mission centers on improving the resilience, safety, and efficiency of energy infrastructure, which directly supports the clean energy transition by helping utilities manage aging grids, reduce outages, and enable the integration of renewable energy sources. The platform addresses critical climate-related challenges such as wildfire mitigation, storm response, and flood management, making it a key tool for utilities facing increasing climate-driven grid risks. By replacing fragmented point solutions with a unified model, Neara helps reduce the environmental and financial costs associated with infrastructure failures and inefficient maintenance. What distinguishes Neara is its use of physics-based simulation rather than statistical approximation, enabling users to move from broad risk awareness to precise failure prediction and actionable planning. The platform supports a wide range of use cases including vegetation analysis, clearance risk assessment, conductor clashing detection, asset lifecycle management, distribution and transmission network design, and regulatory reporting. Neara operates across multiple geographies including the United States, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand, serving major electric utilities seeking to modernize their network management capabilities.

Imagine having the power to stress-test an entire power grid against a hurricane or thunderstorm before the clouds even gather. That is the reality we are creating at Neara.

We use advanced machine learning to create engineering-grade, physics enabled digital twins of electricity grids across four continents, this helps asset owners understand their biggest challenges and bring the most viable solutions to life across millions of kilometres of infrastructure.

By simulating extreme weather and structural stress at a network-wide scale, we empower the world’s largest utilities to pinpoint risks, optimise investments and build a more resilient global energy future.

Our team is a collection of brilliant minds who are fanatical about making a tangible difference in the real world, utilising AI and machine learning to accelerate everything from data classification to complex scenario analysis. We have built a special culture where innovation thrives because everyone owns the mission and we need smart, creative people to help us scale this impact to every corner of the globe.

Neara is hiring a Solutions Engineer to help define and grow the Design function within our go-to-market organization. This is a high-impact individual contributor role for someone who has lived the daily reality of utility design work — pole loading, sag-tension, clearance analysis, work order management — and is ready to bring that hard-won expertise to bear on a platform that is fundamentally changing how utilities design, maintain, and harden their networks.

You will sit on the Sales team but operate as a connective tissue across Product, Marketing, and Sales — guiding product direction with the voice of the designer, shaping messaging that resonates with utility practitioners, building sales presentations that hold up under technical scrutiny, and serving as the credible technical SME in customer conversations. Over time, you will become an expert user of Neara, including AutoDesign, and represent that capability externally.

This role is for someone who has done the work, wants to multiply their impact beyond a single project queue, and is energized by the idea of helping define a function rather than slotting into one.

What You Will Do

• Develop deep proficiency with the Neara software platform — including AutoDesign — to the point where you can demonstrate, teach, and apply it credibly in front of utility design, engineering, and operations audiences.

• Serve as the technical subject matter expert in customer conversations, discovery calls, demos, and proof-of-value engagements, drawing on your firsthand experience as a utility designer to establish credibility and trust.

• Partner with Sales to craft and deliver technical presentations, demo scripts, and customer-facing materials that translate Neara's capabilities into the language and workflows utility practitioners actually use.

• Partner with Marketing to shape messaging, positioning, and content (one-pagers, technical briefs, case studies, webinars) that lands with designers, estimators, standards engineers, and their leaders.

• Partner with Product to channel the voice of the utility designer into the roadmap — surfacing real workflow friction, validating proposed solutions, and helping prioritize against how the work actually gets done in the field.

• Map Neara's capabilities against incumbent tooling (PLS-CADD, SpidaCalc, OCalc, Pole Foreman) and adjacent platforms (Bentley, AutoCAD, other digital twin providers) to articulate clear, defensible differentiation.

• Build the muscle and the materials — playbooks, technical FAQs, objection handling, competitive teardowns — that will allow the Design function to scale as the team grows.

• Engage directly with utility stakeholders ranging from individual designers to engineering managers to VPs, adapting your communication to the audience without losing technical precision.

Who You Are

• 3–5 years of hands-on experience as a Designer, Estimator, or equivalent role producing distribution and/or transmission designs at a utility, EPC, or utility engineering services firm — work that involved pole loading and sag-tension analysis, clearance and NESC compliance, bill-of-materials development, and work order management.

• 3–5 years working at or directly embedded with an electric utility, with a clear understanding of how design work moves through standards, construction, operations, and asset management functions.

• Proficiency in at least one industry design tool — PLS-CADD, SpidaCalc, OCalc, Pole Foreman, or AutoCAD — and a working understanding of the others. Familiarity with utility CAD/GIS environments is expected.

• Aptitude for code. You don't need to be a software engineer, but you should be the kind of person who automates their own work, writes the macro instead of clicking through 400 rows, and is comfortable reading and modifying scripts (Python, VBA, or similar). You are excited to deepen this skill, not intimidated by it.

• Strong communication. You can explain a transverse load calculation to an executive and a business case to a designer, and adjust on the fly.

• Credibility with utility practitioners. You have stood your ground in a design review and can do the same in a customer conversation. PE licensure is not required.

• Curiosity and adaptability. You are energized by ambiguity, eager to learn new software deeply, and motivated by the chance to help shape a function rather than execute someone else's playbook.

• Comfort with cross-functional work. You will be pulled between Sales, Product, and Marketing. You should find that energizing rather than disorienting.

• Experience with digital twin platforms, Neara, or similar physics-based modeling tools is a plus but not required.

• Willingness to travel domestically to customer sites and industry events as needed (estimated 20–30%).

What We Are Offering You

• Competitive salary + ESOP.

• Significant career development and growth opportunities, including the chance to help define and ultimately grow a function.

• Highly meritocratic, non-bureaucratic, and low ego work culture.

• The opportunity to work on complex, meaningful products and real-world problems.

• The opportunity to play a direct, critical role in the trajectory of a high-growth company.

• Fully remote within the United States.

Neara is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

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