Staff Software Engineer

The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our time—but it’s also the greatest opportunity for innovation, and a challenge we’re proud to take on. At Overstory, we’re harnessing cutting-edge technology to enable a resilient electrical grid that keeps communities thriving as our world changes.

The grid is the backbone of life as we know it. It powers hospitals, keeps food fresh, and ensures communities stay connected. But extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and growing wildfire risks are putting this critical system under pressure. All of this combined makes the electric utility industry the greatest opportunity for tackling climate change. 

One of the leading causes of catastrophic wildfires and power outages? Trees and brush coming into contact with power lines. 

That’s where we help. At Overstory, we use AI and advanced satellite imagery to pinpoint and prioritize vegetation risks before they materialize. By giving utilities critical analysis on those risks, we’re helping prevent outages, reduce wildfire risks, and accelerate the transition to a safer, more resilient grid.

Our team spans the Americas and Europe, and we work with utility partners across the Americas and beyond. We’re outdoor enthusiasts, musicians, artists, athletes, parents, and adventurers. What unites us is a passion for solving complex problems, a commitment to climate action, and the belief that technology should be a force for good.

Join us to help us build a more resilient world together. 

Role & Team

As a Staff Engineer, you will work across multiple teams to evolve a suite of web and internal tools that enable utility companies to more effectively manage risks associated with climate change and wildfires.

We are seeking improvement in the following areas:

• Performance & Scalability: ensure that our product can handle 3x YoY growth 
• Accelerate time to value of new product capabilities
• Reduce the amount of manual work required to ingest vegetation analysis into our customer facing tools

At Overstory, our Staff Engineers are hands-on technical leaders whose influence extends beyond their team either through leading cross team initiatives, making technology choices for critical aspects of our technology platform or solving for critical technical challenges within teams enabling our business to achieve our rapid scaling plans (growing 3x YoY). 

This role will start off being primarily team scoped solving critical scaling challenges. There is scope to expand remit as we grow.

Time zone requirement: Europe (GMT/WET, CET, EET) and Eastern North America (NST, AST, EST)

What You'll Do

Technical Skills:

• Broad and deep understanding of system design with an ability to select the correct paradigm/technology given the situation and constraints.  
• Develops a deep understanding of our business domains and how technology can be applied to drive business impact. 
• Innovates and introduces new technologies or methodologies.
• Resolves complex technical challenges with innovative solutions.

Ownership:

• Leads cross-team initiatives or leads on architectural system design at team level
• Drives pragmatic technology choices/decisions making sensible trade offs in order to  balance current and future business needs.
• Defines coding standards and engineering best practices.
• Evaluates and recommends new tools and technologies.
• Hands-on contribution 

Leadership:

• Mentors and coaches engineers.
• Influences technical decisions at the organizational level.
• Collaborates with product managers and CTO to inform how technology can influence or enable the product strategy.

Skills & Experience

• Experience of working in a high growth scaleup environment 
• Product minded and able to demonstrate significant impact you have had on a business through the application of technology
• Proven experience of full stack development across the following (or similar) technologies: React/Typescript, Python/fastAPI, Postgres DB, Data pipelines)
• Comfortable working in a build it, run it environment (GCP, cloud run, grafana, k8s) - or similar
• Ability to design and implement scalable and resilient systems
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to mentor and coach engineers at all levels
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively in a cross-functional team environment
• Passion for learning and staying updated with evolving technologies and industry trends

Nice To Have

• Demonstrated experience scaling large distributed architectures
• Experience working in a remote-first environment
• Experience working with satellite data and/or imagery

Note: We believe that all people are capable of great things. We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet all of the requirements that are listed within this job description.

What We Offer

• Competitive, location-specific compensation and benefits 
• Flexible, autonomous and collaborative working environment rooted in trust - we build our work days around our lives, not the other way around
• Home office stipend, coworking and ongoing education budgets 
• A company culture that genuinely embodies each of our core values
• To be part of truly mission-driven work that reduces wildfires, protects earth’s natural resources and helps solve our climate crisis

About Our Team

We are a group of 100 people from all over the world. Fifteen nationalities are represented in our team and at last count we speak fourteen languages: English, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Luxembourgish, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Estonian, and Danish.

We work remotely from eleven countries and are looking for candidates that are living and working in one of them: United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland, Estonia, Portugal, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and Canada. We gather once a year in-person for our unforgettable team gathering event. We also offer the option to occasionally meet up for in-person collaboration. 

Diversity & Inclusion

The climate crisis is a human crisis that requires diverse perspectives to solve. 

We place enormous value on diversity and believe that the best ideas emerge when people with different backgrounds and experience work together. We remain committed to scaling a team that reflects the communities we serve, and strive to uphold equitable and inclusive practices across every aspect of our business. We are responsible for creating and maintaining a culture where everyone - regardless of background - has a voice in building a sustainable future.

Our Values

Tackling the climate crisis is our greatest mission.

We act with urgency.

Our curiosity fuels our growth.

We recognize that change is constant, and we find joy and power in exploration.

We’re rooted in diversity.

Just as ecosystems need biodiversity to thrive, our resiliency comes from our differences.

We care for each other.

We love the power of machines but we nurture each other as humans.

Trust is fundamental.

We assume the best in everyone, and we share ideas openly so that we have a positive impact.

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Use of AI in Our Hiring Process

We sometimes use AI tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as helping us manage applications more efficiently or ensuring job descriptions are clear and inclusive. All hiring decisions are always made by people, not machines. Any data processed by AI is handled securely in line with GDPR and our Privacy Notice.