POSITION SUMMARY

Are you are passionate about the potential for big data to solve big problems? Can you predict the future (with a forecasting model)? Do you want to work directly towards creating a better, greener energy future? If you’ve got the data and scientific chops to crunch numbers, crush code, and deliver rigorously tested and validated models, we’ve got an opportunity for you to use your powers for good.

Working with engineers and analysts, you’ll have deep support and direct access to tools and resources to consume an ocean of historical data on weather, energy consumption patterns, commodity market trends and consumer behavior to produce actionable predictions of the future. You’ll partner with engineering leaders to package and deploy these models, contributing a critical link in Inspire’s production information flows. Working directly with analytics, you’ll help to educate business and executive leadership, contributing to goals, scenario analysis, and messaging.

Inspire’s Data Engineering team is a highly-driven group of data, back-end and full-stack engineers who use agile methodologies to build and maintain stable, performant, maintainable and testable data storage and processing pipelines that fuel Inspire’s business with the right information at the right time.

Technologies we use:

• Languages: Python, SQL, Spark, Ruby
• Frameworks: Airflow, DBT, Docker, Kubernetes, Kinesis/Lambda
• Infrastructure: AWS, Heroku
• Datastores: Snowflake, Redshift, PostgreSQL, S3, Redis

THE DATA ENGINEER HAS 6 MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Teamwork: Work with teams of engineers, product managers, and data scientists to understand requirements and formulate solutions
2. Problem Solving: Break big data problems down into cases, patterns, component parts and manageable steps
3. Data Modeling: Build, test, and validate forecasting models, and maintain their accuracy over time
4. Data Processing: Build efficient and scalable data processing routines, working with files, APIs, and databases
5. Data Analysis: Analyze large, relational datasets to understand patterns, troubleshoot issues and answer questions
6. Data Architecture: Design and implement scalable and efficient database structures to solve big real-world problems

 SOME EXPECTED 2019 DELIVERABLES

• Cultivated strong working knowledge of Inspire’s data flows & infrastructure, operating model, internal stakeholder roles and external partnerships
• Take ownership of Inspire’s load and cost forecasting models, working from our current state to lay the groundwork for tomorrow in a testable, verifiable, scalable codebase
• Research and implement improvements to Inspire’s operating model that benefit analytics and/or departmental reporting with better accuracy, consistency, or usability
• Develop new applications for and implementations of Inspire’s forecasting model to improve operational efficiency, targeting, or prioritization

SUCCESS METRICS

• Cultivated familiarity with Inspire’s frameworks & operating model
• Delivery of high-quality pull requests in Operating Model, DBT and Airflow, evidencing strong code standards & testing practices
• Comfort with self-directed project management: requires minimal oversight to assess a problem, formulate a solution, deliver code, and document changes
• Positive interactions with stakeholders: able to understand the core problem and potential solutions when working with executives, finance, sales, member experience, etc.

DESIRED TRAITS

• Technical competency - comfort on a command line, a good grasp on the fundamentals of programming, a general understanding of Git/source control, and a willingness to read the docs, search stack overflow, and test it until it works
• Problem-Solving Mentality - gets excited about digging into complexity, wants to ask questions and learn more, and isn’t put off by problems they’ve never been explicitly told how to solve. Especially troubleshooting: ability to break down a chain of steps to narrow and locate a problem.
• Number Sense - Strong background in mathematics or physics, comfort with quantitative measurement and estimation. Ability to work in establishing boundaries and orders-of-magnitude to make informed judgements without fussing over exactitude.
• Big-picture awareness - Understanding of the importance of context, and ability/willingness to understand the business problem in addition to the technical one. Focus on people & impact. Identify shortcuts & justify appropriate level-of-effort. Pre-emptive identification of potential issues downstream.

EXPERIENCE

• Must Have
  • Experience generating seasonal/periodic forecast models
  • Experience generating linear/logistic regression models
  • Experience coding in Python3
  • Extensive experience querying in SQL
  • Experience in automating data processing
  • Experience working with GitHub or other source control
  • Software development lifecycle in a professional engineering setting: environments, testing, deployment
• Ideal Candidate
  • Received data science training, but wants to work on an engineering team
  • Experience generating more advanced predictive models: decision trees, random forest, gradient boosting
  • Experience at a similar scale of data processing (Multi-TB/billions of rows) in large-scale distributed data warehouses (redshift, snowflake, bigquery, athena)
• Nice to Have
  
  • Contextual work in the energy industry back-end
  • Familiar with the exact frameworks and software we use: Apache Airflow, Fishtown Analytics DBT, Redshift, Snowflake, AWS Kinesis, AWS Lambda, Tableau, Docker, Kubernetes

ABOUT US

Disrupting the one-size-fits-all utility model, Inspire’s groundbreaking smart home subscription seamlessly combines personalized clean energy plans with best-in-class smart devices. Using the Inspire app, members can self drive their smart homes from anywhere, and select automated settings to use less energy while earning rewards. Inspire strives to make every home a smart home, powered by clean energy. Inspire’s mission is to drive forward a brighter energy future by simplifying consumer adoption of clean energy and smart home technologies.

Through continual innovation and scaling of connected device interoperability; clean energy supply, generation and storage; and intelligent, decentralized grid services, Inspire is building the world’s first fully-integrated clean energy company.

Launched in January 2014, Inspire homes have used the clean power production equivalent of 121 wind turbines since inception. Driven by a team of mission-driven Avengers in Philadelphia and Santa Monica,, Inspire prides itself on a culture of ownership, teamwork and stalwart obsession with “crushing it!”

CULTURE & PERKS

• Inspire’s culture balances the serious nature and tone of a professional company with the move-fast-and-execute tone of a rapidly growing emerging tech company. We believe in working hard and producing, but doing it in a positive and friendly environment where collaboration is rampant. Inspire calls its employees Avengers. It’s a team out to even the score on behalf of the common man, to challenge the status quo and confront apathy and old-world bureaucracy.
• Every Avenger lives for the mission: To build the world’s most customer-focused clean power platform and inspire a connected movement towards a brighter energy future. Avengers are scrappy, restless, humble and committed to balancing passion with purpose and profit.
• Inspire offers competitive compensation and equity packages, plus benefits such as health, vision, life, and dental insurance - Not to mention, unlimited vacation, 401(k) plan, and LOTS of cupcakes!