Senior Product Engineer

ArcTern Ventures; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

ev.energy is hiring for Senior Product Engineer roles across product management, design, or engineering with a strong AI-first focus. The role requires leading product initiatives across the lifecycle, shaping ideas from concept to MVP to production, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to solve real customer problems.

You'll prototype rapidly using AI tools (Claude, Cursor, etc.), work with customers, and drive commercial impact while elevating engineering and product capabilities.

Qualifications

• 5-8 years of product/engineering experience with a track record of shipping
• At least one AI-powered product from concept to MVP to production
• Hands-on fluency with AI coding and prototyping tools as daily practice
• Strong customer conversation-led product instincts
• Experience leading small squads without relying on hierarchy
• Excellent written, verbal, and demo communication

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of significant product areas from identifying problems to shipping and iteration
• Translate customer problems into clear product concepts and experiments
• Collaborate with Commercial, Demand Generation, and senior leadership for market alignment and impact
• Build working prototypes and demos fast for real customer testing using AI tools
• Know when to use rough prototypes vs production-grade engineering
• Ship, measure, learn, iterate and adjust focus based on results
• Act as a credible product voice in client engagements and cross-functional teams

Skills

Product/Engineering experience

AI-powered product development

Hands-on AI prototyping

Customer-focused instincts

Leadership of small squads

Clear communication

Decision-making in ambiguity

Tools

Claude

Cursor

Job description

About ev.energy

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

We're hiring for a number of roles across both of our Technology teams: new product development and customer delivery. We'd love to talk to you about both teams, understand what excites you, and place you into the team where we think you'll thrive best.

Great Product Engineers don't come from the same cookie cutter - and we don't want them to. This role has a tilt. Your title will be Senior Product Engineer, but you'll bring a primary specialism from one of three disciplines: product management, product design, or engineering (full-stack or backend). 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.

Must-haves

• 5-8 years of product/engineering experience, with a clear track record of shipping product that customers use
• At least one AI-powered product taken from concept through MVP to production scale - you have 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 daily practice
• 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 squads and influencing product direction without relying on hierarchy
• Strong communication skills - written, verbal, and demo - credible with engineers, commercial stakeholders, and customers
• High bias for action and comfort with ambiguity - you make good decisions with incomplete information

Nice to haves

• Experience in energy, utilities, cleantech, or adjacent domains
• Familiarity with EV fleet operations, home energy management, or grid services
• 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 customer growth - how product design and onboarding experiences directly influence acquisition and retention

Product direction and ownership

• Take ownership of significant product areas - from identifying the right problems to defining solutions to shipping and iterating
• Translate customer problems - known and emerging - into clear product concepts, prioritised experiments, and scalable product bets
• Work closely with Commercial, Demand Generation, and senior leadership to ensure what you're building is aligned to market opportunity and commercial impact

Building and shipping with AI

• Build working prototypes and demos fast - good enough to test with real customers, not perfect enough to slow you down
• Use AI tools (Claude, Cursor, and equivalents) as a core part of your daily workflow, dramatically increasing your speed and output
• Know when a rough prototype is right for the moment and when production-grade engineering is needed - and apply that judgment confidently
• Ship, measure, learn, iterate - kill what isn't working, double down on what is

Customer and stakeholder engagement

• Act as a credible product voice in commercial conversations, pilot programmes, and client engagements
• Work cross-functionally with Customer Support, Program Management, and Demand Generation to understand the full picture of how customers find, adopt, and stay with ev.energy

Raising the bar

• Share what you learn openly, challenge how things are done, and raise the capability of the engineers around you
• Model what AI-native product engineering looks like in practice - not in theory
• Contribute to a culture of experimentation, velocity, and commercial impact