Senior/Staff Backend Software Engineer

GridCARE is a leading venture-backed startup solving the most critical constraint in AI’s growth trajectory: immediate access to power. As demand for computing skyrockets, access to energy has become the defining bottleneck in the AI infrastructure race. While leading tech companies invest billions in speculative, long-term solutions that may take decades to arrive, GridCARE’s pioneering physics-based generative AI platform unlocks gigawatts of hidden capacity in today’s electric grid — enabling hyperscalers, data center developers, and utilities to power AI infrastructure years sooner than conventional approaches and without costly upgrades.

Founded at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability and backed by leading climate-tech and deep-tech investors, GridCARE has assembled a world-class team spanning power systems, AI, and infrastructure.

Learn more about GridCARE:

• TechCrunch: GridCARE thinks more than 100 GW of data-center capacity is hiding in the grid

• Utility Dive: Portland General Electric invests in AI-powered flexibility to speed data-center connection

• Data Center Dynamics: From Years to Months — Creating an AI Fast Lane for Data Centers

• GridCARE Raises $64 Million Series A to Create a New Category: Power Acceleration

We're looking for a product engineer with infrastructure instincts and a platform mindset. You'll build a cloud-based system that manages and operates data centers for some of the largest AI compute providers in the world, the kind of infrastructure that powers the leading cloud and chip companies driving the AI boom. You'll be the one owning the architecture, the decisions, and how it runs in production. Reliability isn't optional. When it's live, it has to stay live, stay accurate, and update safely without ever putting a customer's infrastructure at risk.

The role is best suited for an experienced Senior to Staff-level engineer who can independently architect, build, and operate mission-critical backend systems in production. What matters most is depth: real experience in architecting, implementing, tuning, and debugging real time systems that have to run reliably in production, and genuine curiosity about growing that depth into broader platform and infrastructure ownership as GridCARE scales.

• Build a cloud native backend platform that is reliable, real time, scalable, and secure, including:

  • Time series data storage and retrieval

  • Real time streaming and event processing

  • Integrations with simulation, forecasting, optimization, and market modules

• Design for continuous deployment and safe updates to live, mission critical infrastructure, so systems keep running without disruption or unexpected side effects.

• Lead code quality and engineering excellence: automated testing, continuous deployment, CI/CD pipeline development, performance tuning, and system observability.

• Own architecture decisions with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance, cybersecurity, and suitability for on premises control center deployments.

• Collaborate across disciplines, working alongside data scientists, power systems engineers, and DevOps teams to bring AI driven solutions from prototype to production in mission critical environments.

• Own services end to end, from design through deployment and ongoing operation.

Required

• 7+ years of experience architecting, implementing, and operating cloud native, real-time backend systems that are highly available, reliable, secure, and scalable.

• Strong software architecture, distributed systems, concurrency, and security fundamentals.

• Proficiency in at least one backend language, e.g., Python.

• Strong experience with REST/gRPC API design and event-driven architectures.

• Experience with time series data, real time streaming, and databases across relational and non relational systems (e.g., Kafka, MQTT, TimescaleDB, or similar).

• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and production operations.

• Experience with AI assisted development tools such as Cursor, CodeRabbit, Claude, GitHub Copilot, or similar.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills, comfortable prioritizing and working cross functionally in a startup environment with limited guidance and evolving requirements.

Preferred

• Someone who's passionate about making a real difference in the world.

• An entrepreneurial self starter with a focus on scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions.

• Background in energy, climate tech, power systems, or other complex infrastructure domains, including grid operations.

• Experience with industrial telemetry systems such as SCADA or Ignition.

• This is a hybrid, in-office role based in Redwood City, California. Only candidates currently located in the area or planning to relocate will be considered.

• Competitive salary, performance bonus, and equity.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.

• Lunch is provided three days a week in the office.

• Hybrid schedule: 3 days in office for collaboration, 2 days remote for focused work.

• Access to leading academic, industry, and government partners in the AI-energy ecosystem.

• A mission-driven team focused on shaping the future of the energy transition.

$184,000 - $284,000 Total

Join us in tackling one of the most important infrastructure challenges of our time — enabling the energy foundation for the age of AI.