Data Platform Engineer, Octopus Energy Group
Octopus Energy UK
2+ days a week in office
The UK's most awarded energy supplier
Open for applications
The UK's most awarded energy supplier
1001+ employees
Open for applications
2+ days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make a big green dent in the universe by building a truly sustainable energy system globally.
Role
Who you are
- Primarily, we want our DevOps engineers to have a passion for writing high quality code and building lean processes
- It would be helpful to have experience/expertise/knowledge in the following (in rough priority order): AWS, Kubernetes (EKS), Data/network security, Python, Docker, Grafana, Postgres, CDC systems, Data related products (airflow, jupyter, spark, etc)
- The projects will be varied and we’re looking for someone who can work autonomously and proactively to scope problems and solve and deliver pragmatic solutions
What the job involves
- Octopus Energy is all about clean, green energy with transparent pricing and a relentless commitment to customer experience
- At Octopus Energy we are passionate about building great technology to change the way customers use, and think about, energy for the good of the planet
- This is a fantastic opportunity to work on data problems that genuinely move us closer to Net Zero and support the energy transition
- We have developed a data platform that is used by all our businesses around the world
- The platform empowers users with self-service data analytics and automates our data processing workflows, from simple ETL jobs to ML training and prediction
- The Data Platform Team works on anything from natural language understanding of customer communications to processing billions of smart meter readings every day to support creating customised and market-leading smart energy tariffs
- We employ software engineering best practices to design, test, and deploy our data platform and services
- We are looking for an experienced Engineer to join the team to help build and maintain the platform, pipelines, and reporting tools
- Build and optimise the platform used by the data team to transform raw data into business insights
- Scope and deliver new data engineering projects in collaboration with business stakeholders
- Develop and deploy ML infrastructure to help build out our ever-growing AI requirements and use cases
- Research and implement new tooling where appropriate, whether its developed in-house or sourced externally
- Maintain and expand our existing data infrastructure and tools
- Consult the wider business on Engineering best practices and stay up to date with trends within the profession
- Support the internationalisation of our data infrastructure as we continue to grow globally
- Python as our main programming language
- Terraform on Spacelift for our infrastructure definition and deployment
- Kubernetes for data services and task orchestration
- Airflow for job scheduling and tracking
- Circle CI for continuous deployment
- Databricks for our data lake platform
- Parquet and Delta file formats on S3 for data lake storage
- Postgres / aurora for our relational databases
- Spark for data processing
- Dbt for data modelling
- SparkSQL for analytics
- Streamlit for data applications
Application process
- Our process usually takes up to 4 weeks, but we’ll always do our best to flex around what works for you
- Along the way, you’ll chat with our recruitment team and your Recruiter will help you throughout different stages
Salary benchmarks
Our take
According to Octopus, the energy industry in the UK is ruled by a handful of complacent companies peddling fossil fuels, pricing trickery, and poor customer service. Aiming to disrupt the status quo with sustainable energy, Octopus entered the market in 2016 and now supplies energy to millions of homes in a number of countries. Octopus has made a name for itself in energy circles largely because of its “Kraken” technology platform, which it claims is able to reroute energy from renewable sources around a network far more efficiently than competitors.
Octopus further differentiates itself through its aspiration to make everything as easy as possible for consumers, from the simplicity of their bills and the fact that customers are not locked into a contract, so they can leave at any time, to offering customer service over email and social media at times that suit customers. It aims to make the eco‐friendly choice the easy choice, so all of its tariffs use 100% green electricity, while being cheaper than competitors' non-green tariffs.
Its continually creating innovative new products too. For example, Octopus Tracker, where prices change daily to guarantee you get the market rate; Agile, where the price changes every half hour to enable you to benefit from cheap electricity when the sun shines, the wind blows, and the networks are under-utilised. One of the current challenges the company faces is that its products are more complex than its competitors, given that it uses 1000x more data than traditional energy companies. Because of this, it's exploring ways to explain to customers exactly how their products work.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Dec 2023
$800m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Jul 2022
$225m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $2.5bn
Company benefits
- Equity Option Scheme
- Pension Scheme: We'll pay 5%. You can decide what you contribute, starting from 3%
- Money Coach: You may want to think about financial planning. The company has an arrangement with Octopus Money Coach . They offer the opportunity to talk with a professional coach
- Holidays: We're all grown ups, so we don't count your holidays here. We work hard and so we know you need to play hard as well (within reason of course)
- Flexible working: We're passionate about a genuine work-life balance here and we don't pay people to watch a clock. Need to catch that school nativity or work from home? That's cool
- Free Breakfast + other stuff: ice lollies if you're lucky)! Weekly on a Friday we all get together (this happens virtually too) for company updates and drinks - we call it Family Dinner
- Tech: We want to get the best out of our people and get that everyone is slightly different. Have a certain tech requirement? We’ll do our best to get it
- Car Salary Sacrifice: Browse the wide selection of electric vehicles and get a sample quote under our workplace salary sacrifice scheme. If approved, the monthly leasing costs are taken directly from your gross salary each month meaning you're saving on paying some tax
- Cycle to Work Scheme: The Cycle to Work Scheme is a cost effective way to “buy” a bike up to a value of £2.5K, which hopefully is enough for a decent commuting bike, even an electric one. This extends to the cost of accessories and safety equipment as well as the bike
- Season Ticket Loan: Commuting to the office on the regs? If you travel more than twice a week, it’s worthwhile getting an annual ticket. With our Season Ticket Loan, you can spread out the cost over 10 months. It’s quick and easy to sort. Once approved and ordered, your season ticket will be posted to you within 5 days or so
- Maternity leave: 16 weeks full pay + 8 weeks half pay + 15 weeks statutory maternity pay
- Paternity leave: 12 weeks full pay
- Private Medical Insurance: Say goodbye to long waiting lists! For anyone who wants some additional peace of mind when it comes to their health, we offer Private Healthcare Insurance at different levels of cover. The monthly costs are taken directly from your gross salary and spread across 12 months. You even save on National Insurance
- Gym & Yoga: You can get up to 25% discount on gym memberships and we have 45 minute live yoga classes open to all Octopus staff twice a week!
- Headspace: Need some calm in your life? We have 'Octopus Headspace Licences' available
- Eye Test: Free eye test vouchers for all colleagues who use Visual Display Units (VDU). Long spells of VDU work can often be visually demanding and can lead to tired eyes, discomfort, temporary short sightedness and headaches
Company HQ
Soho, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Greg Jackson
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously an Adviser at Ashcombe Advisers for 9 years and a Non-Executive Director at Zopa for 7 years.
James Eddison
(CTO)Previously CEO at Claripoint for 7 years and CTO at Tangent Labs also for 7 years.
Stuart Jackson
(Co-Founder & CFO)Previously a Director of "Foundation" Business Unit at Barclaycard for 2 years and Chief of Staff, Secured Lending SBU at Barclays also for 2 years.
People progressing
Joined as Marketing Assistant, being promoted to Marketing Executive after 6 months and again to Junior Product and Marketing Manager after 7 months. After 8 months they became a full Product and Marketing Manager.
Joined as Senior Talent Partner, being promoted to Talent Manager after 1 year and again to Head of Talent Acquisition after 8 months.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Octopus Energy Group
- Unconscious Bias workshops for interviewers and hiring managers
- Octopus Energy Equality Foundation
- Partnership with the Saracens High School - inspiring future generations - https://www.saracens.com/powering-futures-together-saracens-high-school-octopus-energy/
- Octopus Energy Internships - https://octopus.energy/blog/ada-lovelace-tech-internship/
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