Staff Data Engineer
Gridware
Company Overview
What They Do
Gridware is a pioneering startup focused on enhancing grid resilience through innovative technology. Their core offering, Active Grid Response (AGR), utilizes pole-mounted Gridscope sensors that monitor various conditions on distribution power lines in real-time. These sensors are powered by solar energy and communicate through device-to-device, cellular, and satellite networks, ensuring continuous operation regardless of grid voltage (source: gridware.io). The technology is designed to detect a range of issues, including vegetation contact, downed lines, and equipment failures, enabling utilities to perform predictive maintenance and dynamic de-energization to prevent wildfires and outages (source: cbsnews.com). Target markets include U.S. electric utilities, particularly in wildfire-prone areas like California and the Midwest, with plans for international expansion in the future (source: promptloop.com). Their products integrate seamlessly with utility operations management systems, covering over 90 million field hours and serving 40% of U.S. customers through partnerships (source: gridware.io).
Projects & Track Record
Gridware has successfully deployed approximately 13,000 sensors across eight states, particularly in California's high-risk wildfire areas, covering around 1,000 miles of power lines. Their technology has been credited with preventing wildfires, as evidenced by reports of alerts that stopped smoldering vegetation from igniting (source: cbsnews.com). Notable integrations include partnerships with PG&E for high impedance fault detection and a pilot project with Puget Sound Energy aimed at improving storm and wildfire repair prioritization. In one instance, a Northern California circuit experienced a 70% reduction in outage patrol times, while a Midwest utility saved 400,000 outage minutes across four circuits (source: gridware.io). Ongoing projects include a 2024 pilot with NorthWestern Energy in Montana City, focusing on real-time asset monitoring to mitigate wildfire risks (source: northwesternenergy.com).
Recent Developments
In the past two years, Gridware has raised significant funding to support its growth and expansion efforts. In 2024, they announced a $26.4 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital, following a $10.5 million seed extension in 2023 co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Fifty Years (source: gridware.io). This funding is aimed at enhancing their U.S. operations and preparing for international deployments. Additionally, Gridware has received recognition for its innovative technology, including being named one of Time magazine's Best Inventions in 2022 for their Gridscope sensors and having founders featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2023 (source: engineering.berkeley.edu). The company continues to deepen its partnerships with utilities, including a pilot program with NorthWestern Energy set for late 2024 (source: northwesternenergy.com).
Working There
Gridware offers a variety of engineering-focused roles, including positions in software engineering, electrical design engineering, data engineering, and technical recruiting. The company is built by linemen and engineers, reflecting a culture that emphasizes collaboration with field workers and a mission-driven approach to wildfire prevention (source: climatepeople.com). Hiring is concentrated at their Bay Area headquarters, where they are rapidly expanding their team to support sensor production and deployment efforts. The culture at Gridware is described as rigorous and mission-oriented, with a strong focus on achieving real-world results, such as the significant field hours logged by their technology (source: gridware.io). While specific employee benefits are not detailed in the sources, the venture-backed nature of the company suggests competitive startup perks may be available (source: cbsnews.com).
Last updated on Feb 23, 2026 | Report an issue
As a Staff Data Engineer / Data Architect at Gridware, you will define and build the architecture of our most critical data systems, spanning real-time streaming pipelines, Lakehouse governance, telemetry ingestion, and cross-domain data models. This role sits at the top of the technical IC track and requires deep expertise in distributed data systems, IoT telemetry flows, and architectural strategy.
You will partner across Firmware, Software, DevOps, and Data Science to establish Gridware's long-term data platform vision. Your work will directly shape how sensor and grid event data flows through our system, enabling fault detection, wildfire risk mitigation, and real-time grid intelligence at scale.
Responsibilities
- Architect and scale high-throughput ingestion systems for sensor telemetry, device metadata, and real-time grid events.
- Design end-to-end data platform architecture, including Lakehouse structures, governance layers, data domains, and lineage standards.
- Lead the evolution of our Event Streaming Platform, including schema strategy, Protobuf evolution, retention policies, and reliability models.
- Develop fault-tolerant, self-healing data services that maintain availability during storms, outages, and high-volume event bursts.
- Drive multi-quarter, multi-team data initiatives and partner across engineering to establish consistent ingestion contracts, schemas, and standards.
Required Skills
- 10+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Architecture, or Distributed Systems roles.
- Expert-level knowledge of event streaming (Kafka/Kinesis), distributed compute (Spark/Databricks), and Lakehouse architectures.
- Demonstrated experience designing large-scale, real-time telemetry or IoT data pipelines with strong reliability requirements.
- Deep understanding of partitioning, backpressure, consistency models, and distributed system internals.
- Proven ability to own complex systems end-to-end and influence technical strategy across teams.
Bonus Skills
- Experience with industrial IoT, sensor networks, or utility/energy data.
- Expertise in Kubernetes, service mesh patterns, or cloud infrastructure for data-intensive systems.
- Background designing data governance frameworks or domain ownership models.
- Open-source contributions, publications, or talks in distributed systems or data platform architecture.
- Experience building high-SLA ingestion platforms for real-time monitoring or alerting systems.
$235,000 - $250,000 a year
At this time, Gridware is unable to provide visa sponsorship or immigration support for this role. We're only able to consider candidates who are currently authorized to work in the country of employment without visa sponsorship now or in the future.
This describes the ideal candidate; many of us have picked up this expertise along the way. Even if you meet only part of this list, we encourage you to apply!
Benefits
Health, Dental & Vision (Gold and Platinum with some providers plans fully covered)
Paid parental leave
Alternating day off (every other Monday)
"Off the Grid", a two week per year paid break for all employees.
Commuter allowance
Company-paid training
Apply now
Job expired?Please let Gridware know you found this job on Rejobs. This will help us grow and get more people to work on renewable energy!
Apply now
Job expired?Please let Gridware know you found this job on Rejobs. This will help us grow and get more people to work on renewable energy!
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About the role
March 19, 2026
Full time
Company
- San Francisco, California, United States
10+ years
UTC-08:00
