Enable the Energy Transition
The contemporary electric grid faces overwhelming challenges, from cyber and physical assaults to an aging workforce and, most notably, from the demands of the energy transition. To successfully decarbonize, we must merge legacy, analog generation, transmission, and distribution systems with a myriad of new digital technologies, including new, unpredictable modes of generation and a host of compensation devices like statcoms, to deliver electric power to entire new segments of the economy. Thus, the energy transition is fundamentally a digital transformation.
We have built a powerful, scalable time series data management, application, analytics, and AI platform to help all participants in the energy space make the green transition successfully and cost effectively and we need exceptional talent to join our small team. When we say time series, we mean a streaming sequence of tuples each with a timestamp and a floating point value [timestamp, value]; the value arises from a sensor taking a measurement of a real world, physical process at some sample rate, often significantly greater than 1 Hz. We have won grants from the Department of Energy, ARPA-E, and the National Science Foundation. If you have ever wanted to join a startup whose management is primarily technical and was breakeven before their Series A, this is that opportunity.
Work with a small, world class team building the next generation of time series platforms to revolutionize the country's electric grid and enable the energy transition."
Save the Planet
Instead of trying to get people to click one more advertisement, we are making the grid a more resilient and reliable system, able to integrate a higher percentage of inverter-based resources successfully. We work with some of the largest utilities in the world to make the most immediate and significant impact possible.
Fully Remote and Flexible
We are a fully remote company whose CEO has been geographically agnostic for over 15 years. We will not be returning to office because there never was an office. With great power, comes great responsibility and we trust our employees to get their work done while enjoying the independence and flexibility offered by work from home.
Strong Benefits and Support
We do our best to take care of our employees and offer extensive benefits including covering the vast majority of health insurance costs. We also offer a retirement plan, dental, optical, life insurance and more. We also help our employees cover home office expenses.
Solve Problems Others haven't Dared
Come work on a time series data platform designed extreme performance and scalability. We aren't just about ingesting and storing time series sensor data but making it easy to use.
What are We Looking For?
You are ...
Your Philosphy
Why Work at PingThings?
A rising tide raises all ships and PingThings has been quite successful in a critical sector of the economy. If you have ever wanted to work in a tech-forward startup that is far more steak than sizzle, here is your chance.
While every successful candidate will meet a variety of folks at PingThings and disuss the opportunity directly with our CEO, we thought the best way to answer this question was to ask current (and former) employees the following question:
“I really like the people I’m working with. It’s pretty interdisciplinary which leads to lots of great ideas and different approaches to problems. There are other things I like here as well like the types of problems I get to work on/solve, but I think the one that is quite consistent for me is the people.”
“The type of work I am doing. I am getting to use the skill I have gained over almost 20 years, and still I am getting to learning so many new things (this is very exciting) and I feel there is sense of independence and confidence in my work. So I feel productive and impactful at the end of the day. Team - Getting to work with this type of people who are not only super smart but also very humble and kind is rare. Seeing the collaboration and how they work together is epic. All that results in making my work super fun 😄 I really do not know how I can describe that.”
“One general thing I like is the flexibility to spread the work across the day that fits my schedule outside of meetings. For the work itself, I like the tech stack (Go + k8s and some python), it is quite pleasant to work with compared to a lot of other things I have dealt with (like Java and C++ stacks). For the product itself, I like that PingThings has quite a clear value proposition for a bunch of cases. It is relatively easy for me to explain what sort of things I work on to non technical people and why it is useful.”
“I would say the diversity and depth of the challenges we are working with. And the very bright people we get to work with. But that’s two things, not one”
We are Always Looking for Talent
PingThings is looking for highly motivated, intelligent, and inquisitive candidates that will relish interacting with world class teammates and the unique culture that we have built at PingThings while tackling the energy transition. Given our growth path, we are almost always hiring. The categories of talent that we look for are described below. If you want to know if you are a good fit or just interested in learning more, please reach out to jobs@pingthings.io. Note that we do not post specific job openings.
The core components of our platform, including the ingest layer, the database, the APIs, and the analytical systems were built in Go Lang. Thus, we are always looking to hire excellent Go Lang developers of all experience levels, including right out of school. We tend to drift towards candidates that have more systems-level experience and strong computer science backgrounds, often with robust data structures, architecture, and algorithms expertise. Knowledge of Python is a plus.
- LOCATION: Remote
We offer a complex time series data platform composed of a large number of components, all containerized and orchestrated via Kubernetes. This role focuses on maintaining our existing cloud and on-prem clusters as well as building automation tools to help us spin up new clusters and deploy our software more quickly.
- LOCATION: Remote
You are likely an expert in Python and have a power engineering or, at least, a physical sciences or engineering background with a strong familiarity with time series data and signal processing.
- LOCATION: Remote
You will work with real-time data streams, engineer for performance across browsers, and delight people by making the best software we can imagine. You will collaborate closely with stakeholders to spec, build, test, and deploy new features. You'll brainstorm with Product Managers and Designers to conceptualize new features. You'll collaborate with the back-end engineering team and our growing user base to build, test, and evaluate new features. You'll implement performant Javascript to create new application features and data visualizations. You'll learn about new web technologies and discuss potential solutions to problems.
- LOCATION: Remote
An Actual Meritocracy
We want the best humans possible joining our team. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.
Compensation
Employee compensation comes in three forms:
- Base Salary - salaries are competitive with most of tech and are a function of capabilities, experience, and location.
- Equity - all employees have stock options that vest linearly over four years with a one year cliff.
- Benefits - we offer a robust benefits package including medical, dental, optical, life insurance, and more. We cover up to 100% of health insurance costs for certain plans.
Note that at this time we do not pay out annual bonuses. However, we have been known to top off employee options after a fundraising round or just because they have done a fantastic job.
The Interview Process
The goal of this process is to effectively determine whether you and PingThings are a good fit without lengthy or burdensome time commitments. Unlike the typical job interview, PingThings doesn’t treat this as an adversarial process or zero sum game where we are simply trying to hire you for the bare minimum total compensation package that you might accept. Instead, we are trying to build the transparency, trust, mutual respect, and open communication that have made PingThings successful and optimize for the creation of a long term, mutually beneficial and collaborative relationship.
Critically, we want to do this as efficiently as possible and want both sides to be respectful of each other's time and attention. This is our "getting to know each other" phase and we want the interview process to be reflective of our company as a whole. If there is something that you like about the experience, tell us. If there is something that you don't like, absolutely tell us about it. Similarly, how you interface with the company will be noted. We almost always use calendar links to make scheduling easy. If you miss an appointment without any notification without a strong justification, it is almost always a disqualification. Also note that if you are just "window shopping" or "seeing what's out there," please don't interview with us. We only seek candidates who are genuinely excited and motivated by our mission and technology.
Introductory Call
The introductory call will last anywhere from 5 to 60+ minutes. This call will almost always be with an officer of the company. The CTO typically handles the first engineering call. PingThings CRO will handle the first sales or business development call and the CEO typically handles everything else, including data science, operations, and others The intent of this call is to get know each other. This means that we will ask a lot of questions not just about your experience and background but who you are, what drives you, and why. This is also your chance to ask questions about PingThings and learn more about what the opportunity looks like for you.
Please note that a short call is not necessarily bad and, if we are certain that we are not moving forward, we will let you know during the call. Also, depending on the position being filled, there may be a second introductory call with another member of the PingThings team.
Collaborative Interview
This is the heart of our interview process. Given that it is more time consuming for both parties, we try to limit the number of candidates invited for this part of the process. The goal here is not to pose impossible problems or abstract bs problems (a la white boarding in technical interviews) but to recreate a scenario that simulates actual work at PingThings in an authentic environment to understand how you interact with the team, how you solve problems, how you do that thing that you do, and, ultimately, how you think. The CI (or CTI if it is a collaborative technical interview) typically lasts 60-120 minutes and is always virtual and will always have you working alongside one or more PingThings employees. Note that some preparation work may be required of the candiate.
CEO Call
The final step in the process will be a call with the CEO to provide feedback on the interview process itself and discuss the potential to join PingThings.