Staff Software Engineer

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Transparency, Collaboration, Operational Excellence, Ownership, and Empathy. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

Phaidra is looking for a driven Staff Software Engineer to be a part of our growing Product Engineering team. You will be part of our frontend team who build our web based self-serve product for industrial users. You are passionate about all things frontend. You live to deliver exceptional user experience and developer experience alike. You demonstrate an exemplary level of ownership and collaboration - you are always willing to help people within and outside of your team. and no problem is below you. You lead the team from the front, establish best practices and insist on the highest standards.

The Product Engineering team at Phaidra is responsible for building the tools and applications that our customers use to configure and monitor our AI-powered control systems.

We are seeking a team member located within one of the following area: USA (Eastern timezone)

• In the United States, we accept applicants located in the following states: Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.

Responsibilities

The ideal candidate has solid prior experience in frontend development. At Phaidra, you will:

• Contribute to the design and implementation of our frontend applications.
• Set the team standards and mentor junior frontend engineers. Participate regularly in code reviews with peers and help develop a strong engineering culture around you.
• Collaborate with UI/UX designers and provide insights from a frontend engineering perspective.
• Convert designs and wire frames into high-quality pixel-perfect UI.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and Solution Architects to intimately understand user requirements.
• Collaborate with Backend Engineers to incorporate APIs.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure Engineers to define the best Frontend infrastructure solutions.
• Maintain high level of code and architecture documentation.

Key Qualifications

• 5+ years of work experience.
• Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
• Expertise in JavaScript, including modern features in recent ECMAScript editions.
• Expertise in CSS3 (preferably with a pre-processing framework like SASS) & HTML5.
• Expertise in React and TypeScript or a similar modern SPA framework
• Experience using RESTful APIs.
• Experience with modern frontend build tools and pipelines.
• Knowledge of best-practices and architectural patterns for modern frontend applications.
• Knowledge of User Experience and Visual Design concepts.
• Knowledge of WCAG
• Excellent communicator, written and verbal.
• Share our company values: transparency, collaboration, operational excellence, ownership, and empathy.
• Willingness to up-skill and offer ad-hoc support to our Backend team.

Bonus

• Exposure to some industrial control systems and/or processes.
• Prior experience building B2B enterprise SaaS products.
• Experience with a Backend language (not necessarily Python or Go).
• Experience with WebSocket APIs.

Our Stack

Frontend

• React
• TypeScript
• React Testing Library
• Playwright

Backend

• Go
• Python
• PyTorch
• REST & gRPC microservices
• Pantsbuild, uv

Other

• Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & Kapitan
• Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis
• GCP - GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, Postgres, etc.

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.
• You will spend time in the Engineering org, learning how the teams operate, interact, and approach problems.
• You will read various parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with the documentation culture at Phaidra.
• You will set up your development environment and start working on an onboarding exercise that will introduce you to various parts of our code base.
• You will learn about how we use agile and be able to navigate our sprint boards and backlogs.
• You will learn about various team standards and development & release processes.
• You will start to learn about our system architecture and infrastructure.
• You will start picking up few good “first-tasks” to get yourself accustomed to the end to end release flow.
• You will have started shadowing customer calls related to installing and managing deployments with customers.

By your first 60 days...

• You will have a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how we do it.
• You will have met with team members across Phaidra and started building relationships that will help you be successful at your job.
• You will have completed the onboarding exercise and will be on your way to completing your first production task.

By your first 90 days...

• You will have been fully integrated in the team and with team members across the company.
• You will get a more in-depth understanding of our system architecture and infrastructure.
• You will have completed your first on-call experience helping monitor and improve our production environments.
• You will have become an expert with our tooling.
• You will have started to contribute to knowledge sharing throughout Phaidra.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

1. Meeting with People Operations team member (30 minutes)
2. Meeting with Hiring Manager (30 minutes)
3. Technical Interview with a Software Engineering team member (60 minutes)
4. Meeting with Product and Design Team Members (60 minutes)
5. Culture fit interview with Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes)

Base Salary

United States Residents

• New York Metro: 176,400 USD - 215,600 USD
• Other cities: 145,800 USD - 200,200 USD

This position will also include equity.

These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.
• Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.
• Competitive compensation & equity.
• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
• Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.
• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
• Home office setup allowance, coworking space stipend, and company MacBook.

*Please note that Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above do not apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On Being Remote

We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers - like Gitlab - for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. We have dedicated all-hands meetings weekly to build strong relationships, and we hold virtual team building events as well as virtual socials. 

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#Li-Remote

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.