Principal Product Engineer - user experience

ev.energy; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 106,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

EV purchase/lease allowance

Equity in EV.energy

Healthcare options (Bupa/Medicash)

Life insurance (4x salary)

WeWork access

Annual Team Week offsite

L&D allowance (£1,000/year)

Job summary

ev.energy is building an AI-first platform to turn EVs, chargers and home energy resources into a flexible grid asset. We are seeking a Principal Product Engineer to own the vision across growth areas and lead small squads from concept to MVP, delivering customer-ready demos fast.

You’ll collaborate with Commercial, Demand Generation and the CEO, shaping product direction, and applying AI tools to accelerate development.

Qualifications

• AI-native builder with a story of taking an AI-powered product from concept to MVP.
• Hands-on fluency with AI coding and prototyping tools (Claude, Cursor or equivalents).
• Strong product instincts grounded in customer conversations.
• Experience leading small fast-moving squads and influencing product direction.
• Excellent written, verbal and demo communication with engineers, executives and customers.
• High bias for action and comfort with ambiguity.
• Low ego and high standards; owns data-driven decisions.
• Familiarity with home energy management devices (Nice to have).
• Full-stack capability to prototype independently (Nice to have).
• A portfolio of shipped products, demos or tools (Nice to have).
• Experience driving customer growth through design, onboarding and enrollment (Nice to have).

Responsibilities

• Define, evolve and own the product vision for end users and growth.
• Partner with Commercial, Demand Gen and CEO to spot market/tech trends.
• Turn ambiguous pain points into rapid experiments and demos.
• Act as a trusted product/tech voice with customers and partners.
• Balance customer value, commercial impact and technical feasibility.
• Turn concepts into working prototypes fast for real customer testing.
• Support customer growth through demos, pilots and engagements.
• Judge when to prototype AI vs production-grade engineering.
• Kill weak ideas early; scale promising ones with impact.
• Approach hard problems with customer insight and rapid experimentation.

Skills

AI-native builder

AI coding & prototyping

Customer-driven product instinct

Leading small squads

Excellent communication

Bias for action

Low ego, high standards

Home energy management familiarity

Full-stack prototyping

Proven shipped demos or products

Customer growth mindset

Tools

Claude

Cursor

Job description

We are building the world's largest EV-centric virtual power plant (VPP). By connecting to vehicles, chargers, batteries, solar, and other distributed energy resources, we turn households into flexible grid assets that balance supply and demand, preventing blackouts and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

We are scaling rapidly across North America and Europe. We are moving fast, we are AI-first, and we are looking for builders who want to power the grid of the future.

About the role

This is not a role for someone who waits for consensus before moving. It is a role for someone who shapes the vision, owns the outcomes, and raises the bar for everyone around them.

As Principal Product Engineer, you’ll own the product vision across one of our two critical growth areas:

• User experience — helping residential customers optimise energy use across EVs, home batteries, solar generation, thermostats and grid load shifting (demand energy resources, multi-DER). You’re essentially supporting the end users of our products & services - delighting them through seamless experiences

You’ll work directly with Commercial, Demand Generation, and the CEO to translate market signals into product direction. You’ll use AI tooling to move at a speed that surprises people — turning ideas into working demos in days, leading small squads (2–3 engineers) from concept to MVP, and putting products in front of real customers fast.

Critically, this role exists to develop a new way of working. You’ll lead, inspire and motivate our Technology teams to build AI-first, prototype boldly, and ship without waiting for perfect. This role will also be key to crafting the Agentic AI operating model that defines how ev.energy delivers customer solutions going forward. You’ll have a peer focused on Utility Company solutions, giving ev.energy dedicated product leadership across both sides of the energy ecosystem — and giving you a thought partner who is operating with the same AI-first mandate.

Your title will be Principal Product Engineer, but you'll bring a primary specialism from one of two disciplines: product management or engineering (full-stack, backend, or frontend). Your tilt is your superpower — it's the lens through which you approach problems, the depth you bring to your solutions, and the perspective you add to the team. What unites everyone in this role is the ability to work across the full product lifecycle, a genuine AI-first way of working, and an obsession with building things that solve real customer problems. We're not looking for generalists who are average at everything — we're looking for people with a strong foundation in their discipline who are curious, capable, and motivated enough to work beyond it.

What we’re looking for

Must-haves

• A proven AI-native builder — you have taken at least one AI-powered product from concept through MVP to production scale, and you come with a specific story, not just a resume claim
• Deep hands‑on fluency with AI coding and prototyping tools (Claude, Cursor, or equivalent) as a genuine force multiplier in how you design, build, and ship products
• Strong product instincts grounded in direct customer conversations — you’ve shaped what you built by talking to the people who use it
• Experience leading small, fast‑moving squads and influencing product direction without relying on hierarchy
• Exceptional communication skills — written, verbal, and demo — credible with engineers, executives, and customers alike
• High bias for action and comfort with ambiguity — you make good decisions with incomplete information and don’t wait for a perfect brief
• Low ego, high standards — you’ll kill your own work when the data says to, and you know the best ideas don’t always come from you

Nice to haves

• Familiarity with home energy management devices
• Full‑stack capability that lets you prototype independently without blocking on others
• A portfolio of things you’ve shipped — products, demos, or tools that prove how you work
• Experience or strong instincts around driving customer growth — particularly in how product design, onboarding, and enrollment experiences directly influence acquisition and retention

What you’ll do

• Define, evolve and own the product vision for our end users (customers) — shaping the products, experiences, and capabilities that will define our next stage of growth
• Partner closely with Commercial, Demand Generation, and CEO leadership to identify key market and technology trends
• Turn ambiguous customer pain points into compelling product concepts, rapid experiments, and experiences that delight
• Act as a trusted product and technology voice with customers, strategic partners, and stakeholders across the energy ecosystem
• Influence not only what we build, but why we build it — balancing customer value, commercial impact, technical feasibility, and speed to market
• Turn concepts into working prototypes and demos in days, not months — good enough to test with real customers, not perfect enough to slow you down
• Partner with Commercial and Demand Generation to actively support customer growth — bringing new product concepts and working prototypes into sales conversations, pilot programmes, and client engagements
• Know when a rough AI-generated prototype is right for the moment and when production‑grade engineering is needed — and apply that judgment
• Kill weak ideas early, scale promising ones aggressively, and maintain an uncompromising focus on product impact and customer value
• See hard product problems as puzzles to solve through customer insight and rapid experimentation — and bring the kind of energy and enthusiasm for building products people love that raises the bar for the entire team

Lead our AI‑first way of working

• Operate with AI as a core part of your daily workflow — using tools such as Claude, Cursor, and emerging technologies to dramatically increase speed, quality, and leverage
• Set the standard for what modern AI-native product engineering looks like — combining rapid execution, technical fluency, and strong product intuition
• Share knowledge openly, challenge outdated ways of working, and raise the capability bar across the wider Technology organisation
• Push ideas forward without waiting for perfect information or full alignment — move, then adjust
• Help shape a culture that values experimentation, velocity, ownership, and commercial impact as much as technical excellence

Salary, benefits & how we work

The salary range for this role is £106,400-£130,300 GBP.

Key benefits include:

• Cash amount of up to 10% of your monthly salary, to cover the cost of buying or leasing an EV
• Equity - you'll own a part of the business through our share options program
• Healthcare options - to help keep you and your family in tip-top condition (provided by Bupa & Medicash)
• Life assurance of 4x your salary
• Co‑working access via WeWork (if you’d like it)
• Annual 'Team Week' whole company offsite
• L&D allowance of £1,000 per year - everyone is learning, developing and challenging themselves so we have a professional development fund per year for you to learn new skills

You can find out more about our full range of perks and benefits here.

Location & how we work

This role is fully remote in the UK.

The majority of people at ev.energy work on a fully remote basis, with a small number of roles based on‑site in our testing sites.

This means that most of our people work from home, but we're happy to provide co‑working subscriptions if you'd like to spend time at a WeWork (or other co‑working space close to you).

We balance our remote set up by getting everyone together once a year for an offsite, as we know that spending time together IRL is super important.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity: we do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status. If you'd like a copy of our DE&I policy you can reach us at [e-mail]. We'll always do our best to accommodate reasonable adjustments to the interview process if needed - just let us know.