Principal Engineer

Company Overview

nLine is a technology company dedicated to improving electricity reliability in developing countries through innovative data collection and analysis. We develop and deploy advanced sensor technologies and analytics platforms to provide utilities, regulators, and policymakers with accurate, actionable insights into power grid performance. Our work spans multiple countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where we collect and analyze granular data on power quality and outages. By leveraging cutting-edge hardware and software solutions, nLine enables data-driven decision-making for infrastructure investments and operational improvements.

Work Environment

nLine operates with a flat organizational structure, valuing independence, rigor, and versatility. Our work involves developing and maintaining scalable systems that transform raw sensor data into insights that ultimately contribute to enhancing electricity access and reliability in underserved regions. Therefore, scientific integrity is held to the highest regard and a successful candidate should not be comfortable shipping code that negatively impacts the quality of the data collected and presented to partners by nLine.

At nLine each person on the team takes ownership of their core technical areas while collaborating across our data processing and infrastructure projects. The ideal candidate should be able to orchestrate both high-level architectural decisions and hands-on development tasks. Additionally, they should be comfortable working autonomously, learning quickly, and delivering high quality work with minimal supervision. They should be comfortable working in a small team environment and be able to adapt to a range of services and platforms.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintenance and co-development of core infra products
• Manage and supervise cloud computing resources
• Lead infrastructure planning and deployment using Terraform
• Develop and maintain data processing and visualization systems
• Contribute to backend development and integration of auxiliary services (surveys capture)
• Troubleshooting and Improvement
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to ongoing deployment projects (cloud provider resources, corrections to survey data)
• Assist in the design and implementation of data storage solutions
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of the company's technical stack

Enhancing Analysis Data Pipeline

Implement and improve caching mechanisms for better performance

Architect and oversee the data analysis pipeline from ingestion to visualization

Base Requirements

Education and Experience

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

3+ years of experience as a software, infrastructure, or devops engineer

Technical Proficiency

• Experience with cloud computing platforms, preferably Google Cloud
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Experience with big data processing and distributed computing
• Experience with data visualization and dashboard creation

Soft Skills

• Potential experience leading small engineering/data teams
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a small team, remote environment
• Passion for leveraging technology to solve real-world problems
• Technical Skills and Experience

Cloud and Infrastructure

• Deploying infrastructure with Infrastructure as Code practices (i.e. Terraform, Pulumi)
• Deploying microservices on Kubernetes clusters (with Docker, Helm, etc)
• Using at least one popular cloud provider (i.e. GCP, AWS, etc)
• Deploying, managing, and optimizing relational databases (i.e. PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB)
• Storing tabular data in datalakes
• Architecting and composing multiple microservices to support a cohesive product
• Developing data backup and restore strategies and performing risk/cost tradeoffs
• Implementing thoughtful security practices (i.e. in storing and distributing secrets to microservices, appropriately managing granular resource access for team members, etc.)
• Programming and Data Processing
• Python (Advanced, ideally including experience with parallel processing frameworks such as PySpark, Dask, etc)
• JavaScript (Intermediate, for maintaining existing JS microservices)
• Data Visualization and Analytics
• Experience displaying or visualizing data (i.e. in Grafana, Plotly)

IoT & Sensors

Receiving and storing data from remote devices

Optimizing data usage in protocol design

General Engineering Tools

Git, Bash, Unix, etc.

Misc

Experience working remotely, independently, across timezones and with international teams

Familiarity with power grid operations and electricity reliability metrics

Preferred Skills and Experience

Experiences that are nice to have

Experience with Databricks

• Familiarity with Helm charts
• Knowledge of low-level Python static analysis
• Experience with delta lake and parquet file formats
• Plotly (or other visualization libraries),

Performance Optimization

Understanding of read and write optimization via chunking/partitioning for both datalake-based and relational datastores

Benefits

• Competitive salary for an engineer with similar qualifications in the area in which you live
• Health, dental, and vision covered at 100% up to a certain premium threshold
• Fully remote

Unlimited PTO

All federal holidays in the country in which you reside

Closed office between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day

Subsidies/reimbursements for remote office setup

Subsidies for professional learning opportunities

Paid parental leave

Opportunities to travel to the regions in which we are deploying sensors

nLine is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. nLine will not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, or any other protected group. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.