Senior Software Engineer

Electric Plant Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity package

Standard benefits

Job summary

The Electric Plant Co. is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to own the software platform turning our IoT hardware and foundation model into a deployable product.

You’ll shape architecture, build cloud infra, APIs, dashboards, and firmware integrations, and mentor teams while delivering robust, scalable software. You’ll collaborate daily with scientists and hardware engineers, influence architectural decisions, and build internal AI-enabled development tools to boost velocity and reliability.

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of professional software engineering experience, with a history of owning production systems end-to-end.
• Strong experience building backend systems, APIs, distributed systems, cloud platforms, and infrastructure.
• Experience designing and operating production systems with reliability, scalability, and maintainability in mind.
• Comfort working across the stack with emphasis on backend and platform engineering.
• Fluency with AI-augmented development workflows and AI coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor).
• Maturity about AI use in production: shipping acceleration, not slop.
• Excited by IoT and embedded systems; some exposure to firmware or MQTT/LoRaWAN.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the platform that ingests, processes, and visualizes IoT data.
• Design and evolve cloud architectures for large-scale sensor networks.
• Develop and maintain APIs, services, and dashboards for internal teams and clients.
• Collaborate with scientists, hardware engineers, product, and deployment teams; build internal AI-assisted tools.
• Own systems end-to-end from architecture to deployment, monitoring, and cost efficiency.
• Build observability, reliability, and operational tooling to scale the platform.
• Use AI-assisted development tools as a core part of the workflow to increase velocity.
• Contribute to technical strategy and roadmap while delivering short-term outcomes.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

APIs

AI-assisted development

Observability

IoT / embedded

Team collaboration

Tools

Claude Code

Codex

Cursor

Job description

About The Electric Plant Co.

The Electric Plant Co. is building a new category of plant and tree intelligence. Our IoT hardware measures the hidden electrical signals in plants and trees, paired with environmental data, and our foundation model decodes those signals into real-time insights about plant health, growth, and stress. We're a small, fast-moving company in San Francisco working at the intersection of biology, hardware, AI, and IoT. We closed our seed round in November 2025 and our first commercial deployment has launched!

The Role

We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer to own the software platform that turns our foundation model and IoT hardware into a usable product. As an early addition to our growing team, you’ll help define not only what we build, but how we build it. From cloud infrastructure and APIs to real-time dashboards and firmware integrations, you'll own systems that are both fast to ship and engineered to last. You’ll collaborate daily with our scientists and hardware engineers, influence architectural decisions, and lay down the software foundations that future teams will build upon.

What you'll do

• Build and scale the platform that ingests, processes, and visualizes our IoT data, integrating sensors and AI models.
• Design and evolve cloud architectures that support large-scale, distributed sensor networks.
• Develop and maintain APIs, services, and dashboards for internal teams and external clients.
• Partner closely with scientists, hardware engineers, product, and deployment teams to bring new capabilities into production. In particular, we want you to help the team build internal tools using AI-augmented development workflows, mentoring colleagues in safe, mature use of AI coding tools.
• Own systems end-to-end, from architecture and implementation through deployment, monitoring, reliability, and improving cost efficiency.
• Build observability, reliability, and operational tooling that enables the platform to scale.
• Use AI-assisted development tools as a core part of your workflow to increase engineering leverage and velocity.
• Contribute to technical strategy and roadmap while executing quickly on short-term needs.

What we're looking for

• 7–10 years of professional software engineering experience, with a demonstrated history of owning production systems end-to-end, regardless of title or years of experience.
• Strong experience building backend systems, APIs, distributed systems, cloud platforms, and infrastructure.
• Experience designing and operating production systems with reliability, scalability, and maintainability in mind.
• Comfort working across the stack when needed, while bringing particular strength in backend and platform engineering.
• Real fluency with AI-augmented development workflows (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or equivalent). Not as a novelty — as how you work and how you'll help others work.
• Maturity about how AI gets used in production: you ship acceleration, not slop.
• Excited by IoT and embedded systems; ideally some exposure to firmware or protocols like MQTT or LoRaWAN.
• Startup velocity and judgment about what to skip — you ship the right version for the moment.
• Direct, low-ego communicator. Honest about what's broken. Comfortable being the one who says "this won't work" or "let's just do it."

Nice to have

• Experience building AI-enabled or ML-powered products (not just consuming AI tools, but shipping products with them).
• Prior experience at a deep-tech or hardware-software company — physical AI, IoT, robotics, climate, life sciences.
• Wireless / LoRaWAN experience

Compensation & logistics

• Salary: $175,000–$195,000 per year
• Equity: In addition to salary, we offer a meaningful equity package. As an early member of the team, you'll receive a more generous equity grant than is typical at later-stage companies. We're committed to ensuring that early contributors share meaningfully in the company's success.
• Standard benefits
• Full-time, in-person at our Presidio office in San Francisco
• Start date: ASAP

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.