Director of Engineering

Ava Community Energy; Oakland (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Retirement with Employer Matching

Paid Time Off and Holidays

Pet Insurance

Flexible Spending Accounts

Job summary

Ava Community Energy is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead and scale the Engineering, Analytics & Salesforce group. This hands-on leader will set strategic direction while mentoring engineers and coordinating with stakeholders across the organization.

The role oversees GCP infrastructure, data platforms, APIs, and energy market analytics, driving architectural excellence, security, cost awareness, and DevOps practices in a hybrid/remote work environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or engineering with relevant work experience.
• 10+ years in software or data engineering; 3+ years in leadership.
• Deep proficiency in cloud data and infrastructure management (security and governance).
• Experience leading engineering teams and managing consultants/partners.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL with scalable solutions.
• Git, CI/CD, DevOps and Infrastructure as Code experience (Terraform preferred).

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow and manage a data engineering team and external consultants.
• Own GCP infrastructure roadmap, security, IAM governance, cost management.
• Set engineering standards, CI/CD, code review, and migration to microservices.
• Oversee data ingestion and integrations with internal/external platforms.
• Champion AI tooling adoption across the stack.
• Ensure security, compliance and governance of engineering systems.

Skills

Cloud data management

IAM governance

Big data ingestion

Security governance

Python

SQL

Git/GitHub

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Docker

Vendor management

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Google Cloud Platform

Terraform

Docker

GitHub

ClaudeCode

Postman

Job description

Director of Engineering

Ava Community Energy (Ava) is a Joint Powers Authority comprising Alameda County and its incorporated areas, and the cities of Lathrop, Stockton, and Tracy. Ava Community Energy's charter is to provide its customers with low carbon, cost-effective electricity that integrates innovative energy products and maximizes local benefits through the development of local solutions, ranging from increasing access to rooftop solar to supporting the adoption of electric vehicles.

Culture and Commitment to Diversity

Ava believes in a vibrant culture that supports and nurtures a workplace that offers every individual the opportunity to attain professional goals and contribute to accomplishing our mission. We foster a culture of open communication, responsibility, curiosity, accountability, and teamwork. We want creative problem solvers that are excited to work in an entrepreneurial environment and grow our organization!

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce that is reflective of our service area's rich culture and communities. We welcome a diversity of experiences, perspectives, and skills.

We strongly encourage people of all characteristics to apply and prohibit unlawful discrimination and harassment of any type based on age, religion, color, gender identity or expression, race, ancestry, or national origin, religion or creed, marital status, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information or characteristics, and those with a disability as protected by federal, state and local laws.

Position Summary

Ava is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to lead and grow our Engineering team within the Engineering, Analytics & Salesforce (EAS) organization, reporting to the Head of Engineering, Analytics and Salesforce. This is a player-coach leadership role for a hands‑on technical leader who can both set strategic direction and roll up their sleeves alongside the team. This role will have at least 3 direct reports.

The Director of Engineering will own Ava Community Energy's engineering infrastructure, and lead a team of engineers and consultants through the implementation of our Google Cloud Platform roadmap, and drive the engineering execution and vision that underpins Ava Community Energy's data platform, APIs, energy market participation analytics, and software for Decentralized Energy Services (e.g., Virtual Power Plants and Smart Home Charging) and Local Development Programs (e.g., e-bike incentive programs and kitchen electrification). This person will be the technical authority for how Ava builds, deploys, and governs its cloud infrastructure, and will play a central role in establishing engineering excellence across the organization. This is a high‑impact role at a critical moment in Ava Community Energy's growth.

Position Details

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, manage, and grow a team of data engineers.
• Manage external consultants, providing technical direction, prioritization, and quality oversight.
• Recruit, hire, and develop engineering talent in line with Ava Community Energy's 35 year staffing plan.
• Own the engineering team's roadmap, sprint planning, and delivery cadence balancing near‑term commitments with long‑term architectural investments.
• Communicate engineering status, risks and decisions clearly to non‑technical stakeholders including leadership and business teams.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Management

• Own and drive implementation of Ava Community Energy's GCP infrastructure roadmap operations overseeing cost management, IAM governance, security, resource hierarchy, and DevOps.
• Lead the implementation of GCP best practices including least privilege IAM, org policy enforcement, service account governance, and prod/dev/sandbox environment standards.
• Make architectural decisions for enhancing GCP infrastructure, including serverless, DevOPs, big data operations, efficient data management, logging and warnings, and cybersecurity.
• Lead with a culture of innovation within the GCP platform, with the constant evaluation of new GCP tools that can make the platform (and team) operate more effectively.

Engineering: Best Practices, Roadmap and Collaboration

• Establish and enforce engineering standards across the organization including best practices in version control, code review, pull requests, DevOps, CI/CD, documentation, and discipline for production vs dev vs sandbox environments.
• Lead the transition from monolithic Github repos into smaller services, the transition from virtual‑machines to serverless infrastructure (e.g.,Cloud Run), and continue supporting the development and use of microservices.
• Drive technical design reviews and architecture decisions, ensuring new systems are scalable, maintainable, and well‑governed before they reach production
• Collaborate with experts in decentralized energy services, energy markets, modeling and local development in the development of engineering solutions to elevate their work.

Data, Platform Management & Integrations

• Oversee all data ingestion through existing ETL and API methods, and manage relationships with external data providers (e.g., SMUD, PG&E).
• Supervise our core engineering platforms including the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Github, ClaudeCode, Postman and all other software and services related to engineering at Ava Community Energy.
• Supervise and co‑manage engineering integrations to other Ava Community Energy internal platforms such as Salesforce, Ramp, Quickbooks, among others.
• Ava‑API: Oversee roadmap development for the Ava‑API, which includes endpoints that are exposed to internal and external collaborators for data ingestion for day‑to‑day operations as well as for the enablement of local development and decentralized energy service programs.

AI

• Champion a culture of safe, secure, and well‑paced adoption of AI tooling across the engineering stack to improve developer productivity, code quality, and operational efficiency.
• Identify opportunities to deploy on‑platform AI tooling (e.g., Gemini on GCP, ClaudeCode) for routine engineering tasks pipeline self‑healing, anomaly detection, cost monitoring, among other services.

Security & Compliance

• Partner with IT on Ava Community Energy's IT/EAS cyber roadmap, owning the engineering side of GCP security posture and ensuring the team is implementing best practices in engineering and platform management (e.g., secrets management).
• Support regulatory compliance requirements as they relate to engineering systems, data handling, and access controls

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field with relevant work experience
• 10+ years of relevant experience, including hands‑on experience in software or data engineering, with at least 3 years in an engineering leadership or management role.
• Deep proficiency with Cloud Data and Infrastructure Management - including concepts of security and governance controls (e.g., IAM, service account management, org policies), big data ingestion, querying and storage (ETL/ELT and API design and development), and security, among others.
• Demonstrated experience leading and growing engineering teams, including managing consultants and external partners.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL - with demonstrable past experience as individual contributor and the development of reliable and scalable engineering solutions
• Strong Git/GitHub version control, CI/CD, DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred).
• Experience with containerized environments (Docker) and workflow orchestration
• Experience managing vendor and consultant relationships, including SOW negotiation and technical quality oversight.
• Familiarity with FinOps principles and cloud cost accountability (e.g., spot instances, slot reservations).
• Demonstrated ability to manage and build engineering culture and standards in a hybrid and remote work environment.
• Excellent communication skills, ability to translate technical complexity for non‑technical stakeholders and represent engineering at the leadership level.

Preferred:

• Experience with the Google Cloud Platform
• Experience working in a utility, energy, or public sector organization

Compensation and Benefits

The annual salary for this position is $248,351.54, with a Total Compensation of up to $278,154 annually based on performance.

• Zero cost Individual, family, and domestic partner health insurance (medical, dental, vision)
• Life and AD&D, EAP, STD, and LTD
• Retirement with Employer Matching
• Paid Time Off and Holidays
• Fertility & Adoption Benefits
• Pet Insurance
• Mental Health Support
• Flexible Spending Accounts (health and dependent care accounts)
• Paid Volunteer Days
• And More!

Location and Working Conditions

Ava's team has a hybrid approach inclusive of in‑office and remote work. This role is expected to go into the office on Tuesday, Thursday, and the first Wednesday of the month. For this position, based on role fit, Ava may be flexible on the number of days expected in the office and open to remote work.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations will be made for qualified individuals with disabilities.

Licenses/Certificates

Possession and continued maintenance of a valid class C California driver's license or the ability to provide alternate transportation and a safe driving record.

Working at Ava Community Energy

Ava is committed to complying with applicable laws, including the Americans with Disability Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act, ensuring equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with a disability. Ava prohibits unlawful discrimination based on age, sex or gender, genetic information or characteristics, gender identity, gender expression, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, marital status, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, or on any other basis prohibited by federal, state, or local laws.

The information contained herein has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The information also does not constitute either an expressed or implied contract, and these provisions are subject to change.