Principal Optimization Engineer - Battery Storage

About the Role

Plus Power recruits outstanding energy industry professionals who are driven to develop, build and operate assets safely and reliably to decarbonize the power markets while growing their careers. Our team looks for data-driven and fact-based mindsets, engaging and collaborative behaviors, and personal growth-focused professionals.

In order for the global energy system to make the transition from a carbon-based grid, to a renewable energy grid, large scale energy storage must be introduced into the electricity system to balance intra-hour supply and demand. Energy storage is the enabler of high penetration variable renewable generation like solar and wind.

Plus Power is looking to hire a creative, driven and experienced Principal Optimization Engineer for the development and enhancement of a real-time energy trading platform for grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS). The successful candidate will play a critical role in shaping our company's technology direction and be hands-on in building and deploying high-performance, scalable, and resilient systems.

Responsibilities

• Work with Plus Power’s optimization, forecasting and trading teams to build market leading optimization models for bidding assets into wholesale energy markets
• Design, develop and test production-ready optimization models
• Design and implement cutting edge trading strategies for day-ahead and real-time markets
• Model risk-reward tradeoffs, effects of bid/price pairs on clearing price and risk aware day-ahead vs real-time quantity allocation in automated bidding algorithms
• Integrate new and existing market rules into automated bidding algorithms
• Follow and promote best practices in secure software development, including test-driven development, continuous delivery, and separation of concerns
• Follow team processes including documenting and communicating your technical work

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience as an optimization engineer or data scientist working on problems in wholesale energy markets, preferably bidding renewable energy assets
• Proficient in Python, especially the scientific stack (pandas, scipy, numpy, etc.)
• Expert in at least one Python package for formulating optimization problems (CXVPY, Pyomo, etc.)
• Strong experience and knowledge with commercial/open-source numerical optimization solver such as Gurobi, Cplex and GLPK. Strong understanding of timeseries data and data analysis techniques
• Strong ability to translate business requirements into clean, efficient production code
• Solid understanding of the market rules for different RTOs/ISOs within US
• Experience in using optimization models for decision making under uncertainty
• Excellent time management skills with the ability to manage work to tight deadlines
• Experience developing solid and scalable software solutions to business problems in a production environment
• Team player who follows agile and software development best practices, such as small, focused PRs, frequent written and verbal communication through tickets and wiki pages, etc.
• Solid source control skills with git and GitHub or Bitbucket
• Experience in test-driven development
• Working knowledge of interacting with data in databases (SQL & NoSQL)
• Experience in observability and production incident support with tools such as DataDog, PagerDuty is a nice to have
• Strong understating of Battery Energy Storage Systems, including degradation, physical characteristics, etc. Is a nice to have
• Master's degree in operation research, Power Systems Engineering or a related field. Ph.D. preferred

Compensation, Location, and Benefits

Highly competitive total compensation from one of North America’s leading energy storage developers, owners and operators. Flexible, work from home or hybrid work from Plus Power’s offices in San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, and Palm Beach.

The expected salary range* for this position begins at $160,000. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant experience, skills, qualifications, geographic labor market, and other factors consistent with applicable law. This position is also eligible to participate in our annual bonus program.

Plus Power offers a comprehensive benefits program, unlimited vacation, flexible remote work, educational assistance, parental leave, and a highly engaging company culture with opportunities for in-person connection and learning and growth.

The deadline* for applying to this role is 30 days from the date of initial posting (5/2/2024)