Senior Software Engineer - Python (REMOTE)

At SparkMeter our mission is to electrify everything and everyone. We help utilities and governments make the transition to electrification while providing affordable, reliable, and clean power, particularly in underserved, emerging markets.

SparkMeter’s product is a cutting edge IOT platform that is used by utility companies around the world to effectively manage electrical grids. Our platform utilizes proprietary metering technology and communication protocols to move data from edge devices to the cloud, where customers utilize our multi-tenant SaaS application to manage assets and to gain insight into the status and health of their grids. 

SparkMeter is searching for a Senior Software engineer to lead the development of Koios, our multi-tenant SaaS application for our IOT platform. In this role you will help us transform our existing application to help it become an industry leading solution. You'll play a key role in optimizing the current backend architecture, focusing on performance and user experience.  Your insights gained from the existing application will be crucial in guiding the development of the next generation version.

What you will do: 

• Design, develop, and maintain backend APIs using Python frameworks to enable new features in our existing application
• Identify and address bottlenecks within the application, APIs and database queries to improve response times, throughput, and resource utilization
• Collaborate with the product team and architect to define technical roadmaps and feature implementations
• Design, build and scale our new multi-tenant SaaS application
• Provide development estimates to support planning and prioritization activities
• Provide technical direction and mentoring to more junior team members
• Work closely with customers to demo new features, solicit feedback, and to gain a deep understanding of how customers use our platform
• Work as part of an agile software development team, attending sprint planning and backlog grooming sessions, and daily stand-ups 

In your first few months, you will:

• Identify some key features and optimizations to accomplish quick wins
• Play a key individual contributor role as well as guide other team members to help implement these improvements

Our values and how we embody them:

Be a pioneer

• We take our energy from finding innovative solutions to important problems.
• We don't shy away from the unbeaten path or from hard problems.
• We believe that existing solutions and products, ours and others', are
• opportunities for improvement.

Listen to understand

• We believe that the most important part of a dialogue is listening, not talking.
• We actively seek others' opinions and experience of the world to improve and complete our own.
• We ask hard questions to understand others' opinions and experience at a deeper
• level, and we assume good intentions when asked questions about our own.

Act together

• We welcome and look for feedback on our plans and actions, to improve them and eliminate  duplicates or repeats.
• We believe that transparency, openness and clarity in our plans and actions are essential to achieving great things as a team. We assume that anyone within the team acts with good intentions and shares information responsibly.
• We are driven by the great outcomes that we achieve as a team.

Grow capability

• We look to continually learn new skills and improve our existing skills.
• We believe in sharing our knowledge with others to strengthen and challenge our abilities as well as help others grow their own.
• We know that the quality of our work and of our peers' work is impacted as much if not more by their human skills and by the richness of their experience as by the technical skills that directly match their job description.

Take responsibility

• We believe that every action we take impacts others, in ways that we may or may notice. We accept accountability for the results of our actions and ask for forgiveness as we implement corrections.
• We are not afraid of making mistakes. But we strive to never make the same mistake twice.
• When noticing a problem or a potential of improvement, our first thought is "what can I do to make it better", and our second thought is "who should I talk to in order to make my plan better."

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional experience in software development, with a proven track record of building and shipping high-quality software
• Experience building and scaling a multi-tenant SaaS application 
• Expert with RESTful APIs and JSON
• Skilled in SQL and relational databases
• Experience with AWS cloud services, including S3 and Lambda
• Experience working with customers during the software development process, giving demos of new functionality, seeking to understand their pain points, and accepting feedback 
• Solution-oriented communicator with strong problem-solving skills
• The desire and ability to collaborate with team members, business partners, and customers 
• Able to work Eastern Time Zone hours on a daily basis to overlap with our colleagues in Africa and Europe

Benefits

• We are a small and flat company with no bureaucracy 
• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Work From Home
• Stock Option Plan
• Opportunities for growth through our high-involvement culture & structures. 
• You will work with customers and team members all over the world 
• You will work with amazing people solving interesting problems 
• You can work remotely, with the option to travel to our office in DC for team events