Senior Data Scientist - Forecasting (US)

The Forecasting team is looking for an experienced Senior Data Scientist to develop and maintain AutoGrids measurement and verification (M&V) and forecasting platform. We have a platform that can support forecasting and M&V for about a million devices. You will work with the team of data engineers and software engineers to launch new forecasting and M&V services and to optimize existing ones. You should lead the data science efforts to gain insight and develop/improve the core algorithms for M&V and various types of time-series forecasts. You should also possess good programming skills to navigate our codebase and work with our distributed infrastructure; we expect our data scientists to write production code with some help from software engineers. We strongly prefer candidates who can work hybrid, coming into the Redwood City office a few times a week, and we are open to candidates who need to work fully remotely.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain the algorithms for M&V and forecasting.
• Perform ad-hoc analysis on AutoGrid’s data to gain insights and guide decisions. 
• Improve scalability of forecasting and M&V jobs by optimizing code. 
• Work with other data/software/SRE engineers to troubleshoot production problems and respond to customer queries. 
• Educate the team members of the data science work, including the algorithms for M&V and time-series forecasting.
• Mentor junior data scientists and software engineers. 
• Gather and analyze requirements and convert functional requirements into concrete technical tasks and be able to provide consistent and reasonable effort estimates on an ongoing basis.
• Work effectively with the engineering teams distributed globally to understand project requirements, identify opportunities for collaboration, and articulate project delivery risks in advance. 
• Communicate effectively across business to team leads, subject matter experts, leadership, clients and other stakeholders.

Most of our codebase is in Python, and various services run on Kubernetes clusters. We use MySQL and HBase as storage, most often, and Spark (specifically pyspark) is used to support large forecasting and M&V jobs. For monitoring, we often use Prometheus. We follow a 2-week Scrum process, and the code is released to clients every 2-3 months. 

Qualification:

• BS/BA in quantitative fields (applied mathematics, statistics, or various engineering fields) is required.
• 5+ years of experience in data scientist roles. 
• Ability to learn a problem domain quickly and think critically. Prior experience in the energy industry, especially in electricity and demand response, is preferred.
• Possess good statistical intuition and solid understanding in various machine/statistical learning techniques for time series forecasting, e.g. ARIMA, regression-based, and deep-learning models. Hands-on experience in building forecasting models is required. 
• Experience in Python data science stack, e.g. numpy, scipy, pandas, and scikit-learn. 
• Experience in some parallelization framework (pyspark or Dask) is required.
• Experience with RDS and SQL is required. Experience with NoSQL databases is a plus. 
• Excellent communication skills, ability to explain complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences highlighting pros, cons, estimated timelines and risks associated for prioritization, decision making and risk mitigation. 
• Ability to cope with and thrive in a fast paced, dynamic work environment with evolving project requirements.
• Good programming skills and the ability to navigate a distributed infrastructure are required. Experience in working with production codebase is a plus.
• Experience working in an agile team (Scrum, Kanban, etc.) is preferred.
• Experience using containerization (e.g. Docker) and Kubernetes is preferred. 

About AutoGrid:
At AutoGrid, you will join a team helping to accelerate the world’s transition to a clean, affordable and reliable energy system. We’re a growing and award-winning clean-technology company driving the fundamental transformation of the electrical grid into a distributed, decarbonized and digitized network of connected assets. You will collaborate with a team of world-class software, data and energy experts working at the forefront of advanced data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing. With more than 3,000 megawatts of flexible capacity under contract with energy companies around the globe, our solutions give you an opportunity to make a real-world impact. If you are passionate about using technology to improve society and love a fun, fast-paced work culture with opportunities for continuous learning and advancement, you will love AutoGrid. 
 
We continuously create an inclusive environment and welcome people from all walks of life. We are empowered to do our best and innovate, while living our unique life and work. Together, we dare to disrupt and turn our bold ideas into reality.