Engineering Manager

Our mission is: TransitionZero builds software to reduce the time to build clean energy at scale.

We are a climate-tech startup established in 2021. We provide electricity grid modelling software to accelerate energy planning in emerging markets and developing economies. Today’s tools are costly, closed, and hard to use, with modelling studies taking months or years when they should take weeks or days. We designed Scenario Builder to meet this challenge – so that decision-makers can get shovels in the ground on clean energy projects faster.

Our funding currently comes from a range of US and EU foundations, including the Quadrature Climate Foundation, Google.org, the Sequoia Climate Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the European Climate Foundation.

At TransitionZero, we understand that diversity is an essential component of a successful team, whether in ways of thinking, personal or professional backgrounds, or skills. We aim to be the most talented non-profit in our vertical by fostering a culture of ownership and adaptability.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you will directly manage a team of software engineers building the services that power Scenario Builder, our no-code energy systems modelling platform. Your responsibilities will include coaching and developing your team while maintaining high standards for architecture, design decisions, and code quality. You will also be responsible for delivery, which involves planning, prioritisation, and execution in collaboration with the Product team and the CTO.

The platform is transitioning from services that support Scenario Builder to a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model, enabling external users to run energy modelling workloads on our infrastructure. You'll need to think critically about the requirements for building and operating this system at scale. 

• Lead the engineering team: 1:1s, career growth, performance, hiring

• Own backend architecture and design standards (DDD, clean APIs, open standards)

• Drive delivery end-to-end with a bias to shipping value incrementally

• Evolve our cloud infrastructure for scalability, reliability and cost-efficiency

• Shape how the team uses AI tooling, ensuring it raises the bar, not lowers it

You approach software design from first principles, which allows you to reason about systems through concepts such as domain-driven design, separation of concerns, and clean abstractions. You prioritise product shipments by combining a strong technical vision with rigorous execution and a sense of urgency, making decisive choices even when information is incomplete and being willing to pivot when necessary.

You recognise that AI is transforming software development and understand that success comes to those with a deep understanding of design. Your ability to effectively direct AI in creating well-structured software relies on knowing what quality looks like.

Driven by a passion for building software that accelerates clean energy solutions, you see this work as more than just a job; it reflects your personal commitment to making a positive impact in the world.

You have 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with deep expertise in backend and distributed systems. You moved into leadership to amplify your impact, and have managed engineers - hiring, coaching, running 1:1s, and leading teams to success.

You care deeply about software design - domain-driven design, modularity, clean APIs, and versioning are your go-to tools. You’ve modelled complex domains in relational databases such as PostgreSQL and are skilled in ORMs, migrations, and optimising for performanant solutions.

You have built and operated developer platforms, multi-tenant systems, or public APIs, understanding the responsibility of shipping reliable software. You champion test automation and have defined testing strategies. You deploy on cloud infrastructure with containers, CI/CD, and managed services, always keeping security best practices in mind.

You are hands-on with Python, building APIs (FastAPI or Flask), and working with Docker, GitHub Actions, and Cloud Run. You communicate technical concepts clearly to engineers, product managers, and senior stakeholders.

• Competitive salary based on experience

• Enhanced competitive pension scheme- auto enrollment from day 1

• 25 days annual leave (excluding UK public holidays) and an additional discretionary days off such as over the festive period  

• 20 days annual allowance to work from anywhere in the world

• Hybrid working and core working hours model

• Allowance to set up your home office

• Annual budget and dedicated leave time for relevant training courses

• Enhanced gender-neutral parental leave (16 weeks fully paid)

• Private healthcare following successful completion of the probation period

• Yearly team offsites

Studies have shown that some people from marginalised or underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet all of the hiring guidelines or qualifications. Whoever you are, even if you don't meet all of the criteria, if you can demonstrate a variety of skills and experience relevant to this role, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we hire! At TransitionZero, we're looking for people who are genuinely passionate about what they do, and we welcome all people, regardless of their background.

If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments to the application or hiring process that may better facilitate your participation, please contact our People Team (people@transitionzero.org) for an informal chat. We will make every effort to respond to your request for assistance as soon as possible.