Head of Engineering, Octopus Energy Group
Utilities, Kraken Technologies UK
2 days a week in office (Oxford Circus, London)
Entech company
Job no longer available
Entech company
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
2 days a week in office (Oxford Circus, London)
1001+ employees
Company mission
Octopus Energy's mission is to speed the transition to a sustainable, low carbon future through renewable energy and technology whilst putting customers at the heart of everything they do.
Role
Who you are
- We are particularly excited to hear from people willing to immerse themselves in their area of expertise, from environmental sustainability to engineering excellence, and show strong product ownership
- Technical depth and breadth to drive the future development of the platform
- Structured problem solving skills to decompose and solve ambiguous problems
- Ability to hack a quick prototype and to properly architect a system design (and the ability/pragmatism to decide when to do what)
- Inspirational leadership style and entrepreneurial energy
- Past experience in one of the areas like enterprise software, Large scale transaction processing, AI and machine learning software is desirable
- Scaling up platforms serving a few geographies and 10X millions to multi geography multi entity 100X millions would be ideal
- Familiarity with key technology components underpinning Kraken’s stack ie python, django, django-REST-framework, AWS, kubernetes, terraform, react and graphQL, is required
- Experience managing teams of teams (20+ engineers is desired)
- Stakeholder management experience
What the job involves
- We are now looking to hire a Head of Engineering for the Water Industry
- In this role, your main responsibility will be to manage 4~5 sub-teams (40+ engineers) working on building the water product and implementing Kraken in this utility
- You will manage Engineering leads and work closely with engineering teams as they identify issues and implement creative solutions to address them
- You will manage your own project deliverables, contribute to product strategy and help develop and grow our teams
- Lead and scale the Kraken Utilities team, overseeing a talented group of over 30 engineers
- Embed a great engineering, problem solving and customer-first culture
- Provide leadership and mentorship to 5~7 engineering leads to build high-performing teams
- Ensure that the engineering team ships consistently high quality, reliable, scalable, secure and performant software
- Architect new components of the Kraken platform and drive continuous development to meet evolving client needs
- Collaborate with client stakeholders to facilitate smooth migration and adoption of our platform as a service (SaaS)
- Work closely with the existing Kraken team to help build a consistent platform
- Collaborate closely with the Telco team to ensure consistency
- Communicate with a wide range of stakeholders (technical and non technical)
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 they now supply 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 Energy 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. They aim to make the eco‐friendly choice the easy choice, so all of their tariffs use 100% green electricity, while not being more expensive than their competitors' non-green tariffs.
They are continually creating innovative new products. For example, Octopus Tracker where prices changes 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 they face is that their products are more complex than their competitors, given they use 1000x more data than traditional energy companies. They're exploring ways to explain to customers exactly how their products work.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
46% female employees
44% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Employee endorsements
Challenging work
"The work that I am doing is often quite difficult. I am constantly challenged and problem solving, which I find rewarding as it means I am always..."
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Dec 2023
$800m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Jul 2022
$225m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $2.5bn
Company benefits
- Your development is important - we support and help with development including internal and external courses, learning, study support etc, all bespoke to you
- Flexi working environment
- Equity Options Scheme - you own your own part of the business, share options in the whole Octopus Energy Group so we all work together towards success
- Unlimited paid time off policy
- Work from home opportunities
- Equity Option Scheme - Everyone owns part of what we’re building with shares
- 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
- 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
- Wellbeing - Need some calm in your life? We have 'Octopus Headspace Licences' available. Twice a week we have 45 Minute live yoga class open to all Octopus staff!
- Parents - get access to tax free childcare and maternity and paternity pay. We’re always looking for new ways to support parents, during lockdown we created OctoKids TV to help keep your kids occupied and entertained (https://octopus.energy/blog/octopuskids/)
- Office culture - Our offices are stocked with fruit, breakfast, great coffee, and soft drinks (and 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. We won best company to work for in 2019 and our CEO, Greg has recorded a podcast about our culture and how we empower our people. Check out what our people say at Glassdoor!
- 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
Company values
- Autonomy
- Empathy
- Innovation
- Impact
Company HQ
Fitzrovia, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Greg Jackson
(CEO)Previously Adviser at Ashcombe Advisers for 9 years and 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
(CFO)Previously 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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