Quantitative Engineer Energy Flexibility

LIFEPOWR; Belgique; Hybrid; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

Antwerp office

Competitive package

Job summary

LIFEPOWR in Antwerp, Belgium, is looking for a talented optimization engineer to join our Flex Orchestration team. You’ll build and improve models that decide how our fleet earns value, from batteries to chargers, every few seconds, across markets and timeframes.

We value autonomy, ownership and practical engineering. You’ll work in a hybrid setup with an office near the docks and collaborate with operations, market teams and AI initiatives.

Qualifications

• Strong background in mathematics, operations research, statistics, econometrics or physics.
• Hands-on optimisation: LP/MILP, stochastic or robust optimisation, MPC.
• Forecasting on large timeseries, statistical or ML, probabilistic preferred.
• Solid Python for modelling, simulation, analysis and production code.
• You write readable, testable production-grade code and review others' work.

Responsibilities

• Build and sharpen the optimisation models that decide, every 2 seconds, what each asset does, adapting as markets shift every 15 minutes.
• Build the forecasts behind those decisions: prices, household load, PV and available flexibility.
• Turn market rules and tariff logic into production-ready optimisation problems in collaboration with market operations and product teams.
• Contribute to the simulation environment and test changes at scale before deployment.
• Fix issues, improve what works and push new capabilities into production.

Skills

Optimization expertise

LP/MILP

Forecasting

Python

Production code

Education

Mathematics/Operations Research

Tools

Python

Git

AWS

Job description

Your algorithms decide what 30,000 energy assets do next. Right now, a home battery in Belgium is charging because the grid asked for it. One in the Netherlands is pausing. An EV charger waits a few minutes for cheaper, greener power. Nobody pressed a button.

Every one of those decisions saves someone money and keeps more renewable energy on the grid. The logic behind them is written by a small team at LIFEPOWR. We're looking for the person who makes it smarter.

We are LIFEPOWR

From Antwerp, we orchestrate more than 30,000 home batteries, EV chargers and solar inverters across Belgium and the Netherlands. Together they act like one flexible power plant. That keeps the grid stable, lets renewable energy go further and pays back the people who invested in it.

Our strategy fits in twelve words: beyond EMS, unlocking all energy markets to maximise value from energy assets. Our ambition for 2035 is bigger: 10 GW of flexible power, the happiest customers of any EMS+ provider, and a real dent in the energy transition.

Where you fit

You join Flex Orchestration, the team that turns flexibility into value. Others bring assets on board. We make every megawatt worth more.

Your north star is net value per MW: what our flexibility earns, minus what it costs. Better algorithms move that number. You write them.

What you'll do

You decide how the fleet earns its money, and you keep making that decision better.

• Build and sharpen the optimisation models that decide, every 2 seconds, what each battery, charger and inverter does, and that adapt as markets shift every 15 minutes. You stack value across day‑ahead, intraday, imbalance and FCR, under uncertain prices, load and solar.
• Build the forecasts behind those decisions: prices, household load, PV and available flexibility.
• Turn market rules and tariff logic into optimisation problems that hold up in production, working side by side with energy market operations and product.
• Help build our simulation environment, which runs thousands of assets against real fleet and market data. You use it to test every model change at scale before it reaches a real home.
• Fix what breaks, improve what works and ship what's next. One day that's a bug in a live model, the next it's a new market.
• Be the person operations comes to when they want to know why the fleet did what it did.

How we work

• Ownership. You take responsibility, do what you agreed and go further. When you say "I've got this", it's handled.
• Autonomy. Nobody hands you a task list. You manage your own time, spot where value is missing and add it.
• Innovation and dynamism. You learn something every day. Our market changes every week, and you like it that way.
• Sustainable. We play the long game: lasting success, win/win partnerships and customers who stay happy for years.

AI is part of the team

• You automate the boring parts, so your time goes to the hard problems.
• You stay critical. You check the output and you own the result, whoever wrote the first draft.
• You help us find the next thing AI can take off our plate, and share what works with the rest of the team.
• Even our hiring works this way. If we ask you for a practical case, AI is welcome. We want to see how you think with it.

Your first 90 days

• Month 1: get to know the fleet, the EMS codebase and our simulation setup. Ship your first small improvement.
• Month 2: take ownership of a live model and its forecasts, from first bug to better version.
• Month 3: own a piece of the EMS roadmap and tell us what we should build next.

What you bring

• A strong background in mathematics, operations research, statistics, econometrics or physics, or the experience that proves you didn't need one.
• Hands‑on optimisation: LP/MILP, stochastic or robust optimisation, MPC.
• Forecasting on large timeseries, statistical or ML, ideally probabilistic, and the habit of turning results into one clear conclusion.
• Solid Python for modelling, simulation, analysis and production code.
• You think like a software engineer, not only a modeller. You write code that others can read, test and run in production, and you're comfortable with Git, pull requests and honest code reviews.
• You thrive in a scale‑up. You switch between a production bug, new functionality and a better model without losing the thread.
• You explain what a model decided, and why, so operations and engineers both get it.
• You already build with AI tools every day, and you know where they fall short.

Bonus points

• Financial optimisation: trading, portfolio or risk‑aware bidding under uncertainty.
• Balancing markets (FCR, aFRR, mFRR) or energy trading.
• Building simulations at scale.
• A feel for batteries and power systems: power versus energy, state of charge, derating, grid frequency.
• Classic software skills: you can find your way in our C++ real‑time core, with or without AI.
• AWS or cloud data pipelines, with a pinch of MLOps: getting models versioned, monitored and retrained in production.
• English is our working language. Dutch is a welcome extra.

What you get

• Your contract, your way. Join us on payroll or as a freelancer.
• Hybrid by design. Work where you do your best work. When you want a team day, our office on Antwerp's Eilandje waits for you, with the docks on your doorstep.
• Output over hours. We care about the value you add, not the minutes you log.
• A team of builders. We only work with people who take real ownership and lay the bricks themselves. If that's you, you'll fit right into a team that's anything but standard.
• Room to shape. Our processes aren't set in stone. You help design how we work today and how we grow tomorrow.
• A package that fits. Pay in line with the experience you bring, topped up with interesting extras.