Communications Engineering Associate at PowerGen Renewable Energy

As a Communications Engineer, you will play a critical role in keeping PowerGen’s customers connected across vast geographies in which we operate. You will coordinate with an international technology team to keep the company’s operations running smoothly with the best hardware, software, and firmware tools possible.

You will report to the R&D Team Lead and work closely across the Technology, Engineering, and Customer Divisions to build the tools we use to serve customers across all countries in which we operate.

This role requires creative thinking about how established and new technologies can make a significant contribution to PowerGen’s mission of building the energy systems of the future in Africa. You will work with the R&D team to implement these ideas on PowerGen’s current and future grids in real time.

What You’ll Make Happen:

Communications

• Research, assess, pilot, and implement a reliable, robust, and cost-effective communications system for existing and future sites.
• Standardize communications systems design for microgrid assets, then test and deploy that design in a scalable way across all PowerGen markets. Support installation teams in deploying designs.

Metering

• Manage complex relationships with hardware vendors to ensure seamless performance between PowerGen’s cloud management platform, on-site equipment, and customer user interfaces.
• Support PowerGen’s O&M and Customer Support teams to identify root causes of metering issues and prioritize solutions appropriately.

Research & Development

• Maximize the value of embedded sensor networks to optimize service and operational excellence.
• Test and implement tools that increase the efficiency and reliability of PowerGen’s sales, service, and delivery of electricity to customers in multiple countries.
• Identify, prioritize and track the evolution of key technical advances that arise across decentralized energy ecosystem. Use those developments to continuously improve PowerGen’s existing tools.

What Excites You:

• Tackling big, thorny problems with smart technology that will transform the African energy sector
• The opportunity to become a technical expert in an area that might be previously unfamiliar to you
• A fast-paced environment where constant change is the norm and individual initiative is expected
• Autonomy to implement your creative solutions – not just generating ideas, but committing the time, creativity, and skill to make them actually happen
• Excellence – in your peers, in your work, and in our company’s commitment to our customers
• Passion for organization, details, and precision in all you do

You Already Have:

• 2-4 years of testing and delivering comms solutions in the world’s most difficult environments
• Failure in a team or project delivery and the lessons you learned along the way, including root causes

Skills

• Excellent communication with peers, managers, and junior developers
• Critical thinking & problem solving
• Ability to design, implement, analyze a technical experiment
• Ability to prioritize team workflow and manage project implementation

Experience

• Demonstrated expertise in complex communications networks
• Interest in / knowledge of Internet of Things (IoT) based solutions and enabling platforms
• Communications systems testing and debugging
• Integrating 3rd party systems with MNO or mobile money aggregator systems
• Designing, building and managing multi-component systems
• Developing or managing communications for remote sensing/actuation
• Data science and analysis
• BONUS: artificial intelligence & machine learning, blockchain architectures

Education: Education: B.S. or M.S. in a relevant field such as electrical engineering, computer science, communications engineering, systems engineering, energy engineering

Benefits and Compensation

• Competitive annual compensation
• Annual holiday bonus
• Medical insurance
• Flexible work schedule
• Professional development opportunities internally and externally
• Performance feedback and open-door company culture
• Team building and company-wide events
• Opportunity to work with a dynamic team of brilliant people passionate about electrifying East Africa!