Principal Engineer - EV Charging and Energy System

AmpOn; North Carolina; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

AmpOn is building an advanced EV charging and energy management platform, seeking a Principal Engineer / Software Architect to take technical ownership of the core platform. This senior, hands-on role requires experience building EV charging software at scale and addressing energy ecosystem challenges.

You will own CSMS & EVSE management, smart charging, energy intelligence, grid interoperability and V2G, while guiding engineers and collaborating with manufacturers, utilities and partners.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience in EV charging systems and platform-scale design.
• Proven ability to own and ship production-grade CSMS and charging components.
• Leadership experience mentoring engineers and setting technical direction.

Responsibilities

• Design the architecture and write production code for core platform components.
• Build and own challenging protocol and control modules.
• Review critical engineering decisions and code for quality and reliability.
• Diagnose charger interoperability issues across manufacturers.
• Design smart-charging and energy-management algorithms.
• Collaborate with EVSE manufacturers, utilities and partners.

Skills

OCPP CSMS development

Smart charging

Dynamic load management

EVSE interoperability

OCPI roaming

ISO 15118 & Plug & Charge

V2G / bidirectional charging

Energy management & optimization

OpenADR / IEEE 2030.5

High-scale cloud & distributed systems

Job description

AmpOn is building an advanced EV charging and energy management platform, and we're looking for a Principal Engineer / Software Architect to take technical ownership of our core platform.

This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who has actually built EV charging software at scale — someone who sees charging not just as an OCPP connection to an EVSE, but as one piece of a broader energy ecosystem.

You'll work across CSMS, smart charging, dynamic load management, energy management and EV interoperability, ideally with exposure to Plug & Charge, roaming and utility/grid integration.

What you'll own

• CSMS & EVSE management — OCPP 1.6J, 2.0.1 and 2.1, charger lifecycle, transactions, telemetry, diagnostics, firmware, security and real-world EVSE interoperability.
• Smart charging & load management — Dynamic site load management, charging profiles, power allocation, transformer/site constraints, fleet charging and optimization across AC and DC infrastructure.
• Energy intelligence — Coordinating EV charging with building demand, solar, batteries, tariffs, demand charges and grid constraints.
• EV roaming & interoperability — OCPI, CPO/eMSP integrations, sessions, tariffs, CDRs, authorization and roaming.
• Plug & Charge / V2G — ISO 15118, certificate and PKI flows, Plug & Charge, and the evolution toward bidirectional charging.
• Grid & utility integration — Managed charging, demand response, DER integration, OpenADR, IEEE 2030.5, utility programs, VPPs and grid services.

A major part of the role is building the intelligence between these systems. When a utility, site or transformer imposes a new power constraint, AmpOn needs to decide how available energy should be allocated across connected vehicles — and reliably translate that decision into charger-level control.

Problems you'll actually work on

• How do we safely allocate 500 kW across 40 EVSEs when building load and available site capacity change every few seconds?
• How should charging behavior adapt when electricity prices, demand charges, solar production or battery availability change?
• How do we build a CSMS that behaves consistently when different charger manufacturers interpret parts of OCPP differently?
• How do we translate a utility demand-response event or grid constraint into real charging behavior across thousands of distributed EVSEs?
• How do ISO 15118, Plug & Charge, PKI, OCPP and backend authorization fit together end-to-end?
• How do we manage roaming sessions across OCPI while keeping authorization, metering, tariffs, CDRs and billing accurate?
• How do we evolve today's managed charging platform toward V2G and EVs operating as distributed energy resources?

Who we're looking for

We're not looking for a general software architect who happened to work on an EV project once. We're looking for someone who has spent meaningful time inside the EV charging, smart-energy or eMobility industry, preferably building the underlying platforms.

You might currently be a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Charging Platform Architect, CSMS Architect, Smart Charging Architect, eMobility Architect or Senior Technical Lead.

Deep hands-on experience in several of the following:

• OCPP and production CSMS development
• Smart charging and dynamic load management
• EVSE interoperability across multiple charger manufacturers
• OCPI and roaming
• ISO 15118 and Plug & Charge
• V2G / bidirectional charging
• Energy management and optimization
• OpenADR or IEEE 2030.5
• Utility or DER integrations
• High-scale cloud and distributed systems

You don't need to be an expert in every protocol above. What matters is exceptional depth in EV charging systems, understanding how the layers fit together, and the technical ability to take ownership of adjacent areas.

This is a hands-on role

This is not an architect role where you only create diagrams and delegate implementation. You will:

• Design the architecture and write production code
• Build the difficult protocol and control components personally
• Review critical engineering decisions and code
• Diagnose complex charger interoperability issues
• Design smart-charging and energy-management algorithms
• Work directly with EVSE manufacturers, utilities and technology partners
• Mentor engineers and establish technical standards

Technology

Our platform is cloud-based and highly distributed, so strong backend engineering experience is essential. Experience with Go/Golang, AWS, PostgreSQL, event-driven architectures, message queues and event streaming, containers, Kubernetes, WebSockets, APIs, PKI and high-availability distributed systems is highly relevant. Exact technology experience matters less than having designed and built reliable production platforms at scale.

What would make you stand out

You'd be an exceptional candidate if you've personally built significant production systems combining OCPP, smart charging, load management, ISO 15118, OCPI and energy/grid integration — and can move comfortably between protocol-level detail, distributed-system architecture and real electrical and energy constraints.

Experience at an EV charging software company, CSMS provider, EVSE manufacturer, automaker, smart-energy company, DERMS/VPP provider or utility technology company would be particularly valuable.

Why AmpOn

We're not building another basic charger-management platform. Our goal is to combine EV charging, energy intelligence, smart charging and grid integration into one platform capable of managing charging from the individual EVSE through to site and grid-level energy requirements.

For the right person, this is a chance to own that architecture and become one of the key technical leaders responsible for building it.

• If you've built serious EV charging or smart-energy technology and want to architect the next generation of it, we'd like to talk.