The Company

Sofar is on a mission to connect the world’s oceans. We design, build, and deploy the largest privately owned network of marine weather sensors to power the world’s best marine weather forecasts. Our data helps our customers to increase efficiency and reduce emissions, delivering tools to governments and other stakeholders to understand impacts of climate change on extreme weather and ocean health. We live on Planet Ocean, and our goal is to create the ocean intelligence needed to ensure a sustainable future.

About the Position

We are looking for a product-driven Software Engineering Leader to join our team as we scale our software product for the maritime transport industry. Our product lines offer a uniquely complex and technically challenging opportunity: pulling data off of free-floating buoys over our world’s oceans, modeling this data through complex scientific algorithms and translating it into useful information that steer commercial cargo vessels at sea.

Building our software and the team will require you to have a deep understanding of our customers, their workflows, and the data they work with every day. You will collaborate with a top-notch team of engineers, ocean scientists and product managers to translate user needs into high-quality software that empowers our users with data to get their work done more efficiently.

Our Head of Software Engineering will be leading the strategy and growth of Software at Sofar as a whole. The data from our global sensor network powers multiple industries and we expect this role to be instrumental in leading new product development from ideation to go-live and beyond.

You have experience growing software engineering organizations in a startup environment and have seen software excellence at various scales of growth. Your direct reports have included e.g. Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and Directors of Engineering. You have grown headcount, advanced your team’s career development, moved product lines, and managed budgets. When it comes to making technical decisions you are on the front lines and the leadership team will be looking to your experience to ensure the entire Sofar organization and our mission is successful.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate cross-functionally with the leadership team to make strategic decisions to advance core products and technology, explore new markets, and find the perfect balance between speed and excellence.
• Grow an outstanding software engineering organization by hiring and retaining exceptional people to join our mission-driven team. Help us preserve our open, supportive and collaborative culture as we grow.
• Build and steward a vision for how software at Sofar will grow. Stay one step ahead of what the company will need next as we scale, and set up cross-functional teams to grow and succeed.
• Draw from a wide range of technical experience to inform sound core architectural, technology and strategic decisions. Know when to make a call, when to lean on your team, and when to bring in an expert for help.

About You

• You’ve scaled a software organization in a rapid-growth startup environment.
• You have 8+ years of experience as a software engineering leader in product-focused organizations and domains with highly technical consideration (data processing, modeling, security, infrastructure, etc.)
• You have a strong technical background and up-to-date knowledge of modern web application design paradigms and technologies.
• You have implemented career level guidelines for your organization and helped to grow engineers and new engineering leaders within it.
• You’re passionate about joining a mission-driven startup with a like-minded team of people to make a positive impact on the world and its oceans.

Bonus Points

• Experience working in shipping, maritime, or marine industries
• Experience working for a startup in the renewables, clean energy, climate or sustainability space
• Experience with data processing, modeling or machine learning
• Experience with IoT, remote sensing, physical computing or robotics

Estimated Salary Range

• $220,000 - $290,000
• The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and may be modified in the future. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, experience, and equity package.

Sofar's Commitment to Climate Justice

We at Sofar Ocean acknowledge that careers in the marine sciences “... have traditionally been, and remain, non-diverse work environments”, thereby limiting the entry and prosperity of underrepresented groups in the space. (Johri et al., 2021) Many of these same groups are disproportionately affected by climate change, and are often excluded from decision making that directly address their interests and needs.

We are committed to addressing these climate injustices and highly encourage people who identify as women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) to apply.

Employee Conduct

It is the responsibility of every employee to contribute to a positive work environment through cooperative and professional interactions with co-workers, customers, and vendors.

Equal Employment Opportunity

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other factors prohibited by law.