Staff Engineer

Key Skills

.NET, C# Programming, Cypress, DevOps, Docker, GitLab, Google Bigtable, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), JavaScript, Kubernetes-K8s, Leadership Skill, Linear Algebra, Machine learning techniques, MLOps tools, Probability, Python Programming, PyTorch, React.js, SDK, Statistics, Terraform, TypeScript

Job Description

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Portugal, and India.

Please only apply to one opening. If you are a better fit for another opening, our team will move your application. Candidates who apply to multiple openings will not be considered.

Who You Are

Phaidra is looking for a driven Staff Engineer / Tech Lead who can drive the technical vision at Phaidra Engineering and our platform teams specifically. You have good instincts and strong judgment, and your decisions were tested by time over and over again. You demonstrate an exemplary level of ownership and no problem is below you. You are passionate about the design and deployment of large-scale systems and take pride in the reliability and scalability of your software. You lead the team from the front, establish best practices and insist on the highest standards. You nurture and grow the team around you.

Responsibilities

The ideal candidate has prior experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams. Your responsibilities will include flavors of Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, MLOps, Data Engineering and DevOps. You will -

• Drive the technical vision and engineering excellence at Phaidra with a focus on our platform
• Create alignment on technical approaches for platform engineers and other stakeholders across multiple teams
• Mentor engineers and help develop a strong engineering culture around you
• Architect and build scalable products that extend the functionality of our core platform.
• Generalize and further scale our core platform for diverse data processing and AI applications. This includes:
• Large-scale data ingestion and processing.
• Data Processing - streaming, batch & orchestration
• Distributed model training and evaluation.
• Distributed inference (i.e. automated decision-making) for AI-generated recommendations or direct control.
• Data & Feature stores
• Data retrieval (APIs) - both batch & realtime
• Collaborate with other teams like Product & Customer Success to understand engineering requirements.
• Ensure operational excellence including smooth deployments, performance and reliability
• Work in a data driven manner with DORA metrics, SLO/SLIs, etc.
• Maintain high level of code and architecture documentation
• Balancing hands-on work and delegation to maximise impact

Key Qualifications

• 10+ years of work experience.
• Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science.
• Prior experience with tech leadership for a team of engineers solving complex technological problems
• Deep expertise architecting and building large scale multi-tenant systems in the cloud with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems engineering - large scale data processing, distributed model training, distributed model serving, etc.
• Expertise in building customer facing products.
• Expertise in at least one of the top cloud providers, preferably GCP and some level of experience with cloud infrastructure technologies like Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Experience with DevOps activities.
• Share our company values: transparency, collaboration, operational excellence, ownership, empathy

Bonus

• Strong expertise in Python
• Knowledge of Linear Algebra, Probability, Statistics, Calculus
• Experience with Machine Learning and MLOps
• Exposure to some industrial control systems and/or processes
• Expertise with some parts of our tech stack is a big plus.

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra, our product and our customers.
• You will spend time in the Engineering org, learning how the teams operate, interact, and approach problems.
• You will read various parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with the documentation culture at Phaidra.
• You will set up your development environment, explore various parts of the code base and learn about our operating, development & release processes and team standards. You will explore our system architecture & infrastructure.
• You will immerse yourself with different teams learning about their domains.
• You will have regular 1:1s with other engineering leadership.

By your first 60 days...

• You will have shipped production code to get the end to end developer experience at Phaidra.
• You will have a solid understanding of what Phaidra does, how we do it and good grasp of our overall technical architecture.
• You will hold 1:1s with other engineers to learn more about their domains, teams and their pain points.
• You will be a participant in our weekly operational review meetings, getting direct exposure to our weekly incident reports and post mortems, learning about the operating conditions of our system.
• You will be a participant in technical design reviews and some code reviews.
• You will have started forming an opinion on the direction that our architecture needs to evolve.

By your first 90 days...

• You will have been fully integrated in the org and with team members across the company.
• You will have completed your first on-call experience helping monitor and improve our production environments.
• You will have started driving improvements to our engineering processes.
• You will have started to contribute to knowledge sharing throughout Phaidra.
• You will have identified some of the core areas that we need to invest time & resources in to improve.

Our Stack

• Languages - (Backend) Python, Go; (Frontend) JavaScript/TypeScript, React; Customer SDK & Clients - C# .NET
• PyTorch
• Cypress
• Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & Kapitan
• Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis, Vercel
• GCP - GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, Postgres, etc.
• Ray.io
• REST & gRPC micro-services
• Poetry, Pantsbuild

Base Salary

• US Residents: $135,000-$200,000

These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.
• Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.
• Competitive compensation & equity with an early exercise option.
• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
• Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.
• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
• Home office setup stipend and company MacBook.
• Monthly internet reimbursement.

On being Remote

We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers - like Gitlab - for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. Most teams meet daily, and we have dedicated all-hands meetings bi-weekly to build strong relationships. We hold virtual team building events once per month - and even hold virtual socials to watch rocket launches! We have a yearly in-person, all-company summit in locations like Seattle, Athens, Goa, and Barcelona.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.