🌍 Product Tech Lead for FOSS (Global | Remote | English)

Location: Fully Remote (~180+ countries supported)
Employment Type: Full-Time/ Contract
Languages Required: English fluency
Experience Required: Senior-level
Salary Range: 30-130kEUR/year, based on experience and quality of outputs
Team: Software Engineering
Reports to: Head of Software Engineering, Sid Krishna
Works Closely With: Product Tech Lead, Design/UX, Modelling (PyPSA), Backend/DevOps, Others
Travel Requirements: Occasional travel to workshops or team events required
Start Date: Q1/Q2 2026 (exact dates TBD)

🧭 The mission

OET is building open-source, high-performance tools for energy and grid planning - software that helps system operators, regulators, policymakers and researchers plan faster, more transparent transitions to clean energy. To learn more about OET and our team, you can visit our website.

🎯 The role

We’re looking for a Senior Geospatial Frontend Engineer to own the interactive mapping experience in an enterprise-grade open-source product. You’ll build fast, intuitive geospatial workflows for editing, styling, and exploring large network and time-series datasets, turning complex energy models into something users can trust and operate at speed. This is a hands-on, senior role: you will ship high-quality features, influence architecture, and raise the bar for frontend craft across the team.

This role is for people who enjoy building products more than building technology for its own sake. You’ll lead with a strong UX mindset, and you’ll make pragmatic decisions that improve user outcomes, not just code quality.

Our Head of Software Engineering (aka your future Manager): Sid Krishna

🛠️ Your Key Responsibilities

Own the mapping experience as a product-quality system: build and evolve a high-performance geospatial UI where interaction design, performance, and reliability are treated as first-class concerns.
Build “pro-grade” geospatial editing workflows: create tools for drawing and editing points/lines/polygons, including selection states, snapping, validation rules, undo/redo, and exportable artifacts.
Deliver a styling/symbology experience users trust: implement a layer/style editor that supports portable styles, sensible defaults, and powerful “color/size by attribute” workflows — without overwhelming users.
Make large datasets feel smooth: profile performance, manage memory responsibly, and use the right techniques (virtualization, background computation, incremental updates) so everything stays responsive.
Design robust state and interaction architecture: build a maintainable foundation for complex UI state, event handling, and tool modes — the kind that doesn’t collapse when features scale.
Collaborate in a “product trio” style: work closely with product and design, and partner with domain experts to translate real workflows into interfaces that users love and trust.
Ensure technical excellence: write clean, testable TypeScript, build reusable UI components, and help establish patterns that keep velocity high without sacrificing stability.
Communicate clearly and proactively in remote work: tailor communication for different audiences, document decisions, and keep momentum without needing constant meetings.
Bring your own lessons learned: apply what you’ve learned from past product wins and failures to help OET level up.

✅ You’ll Be a Great Fit If You Are/Have...

6+ years building modern frontend applications with React + TypeScript (or equivalent senior-level experience)
Strong product engineering instincts: you can turn messy requirements into clean UX and reliable code with a “ship it, own it” mentality: you care about outcomes, polish, and real users.
Deep familiarity with web mapping (MapLibre GL / Mapbox GL style ecosystems), including layers/sources, style expressions, and interactive performance constraints.
Hands-on experience building geospatial editing tools with maplibre-gl-terradraw and Turf.js (drawing, vertex manipulation, snapping, selection states, validation).
Proven ability to ship complex features end-to-end: design tradeoffs, implementation, testing, and iteration with real users.
Excellent written communication and comfort working asynchronously in a fully remote team.

⭐ Big plus:

Experience with customisable Dashboards
AI driven UX/UI development and a good feeling for user-friendly designs
Data visualization experience (time series, scenario comparisons, brush/zoom, legend interactions).
Electron experience (desktop constraints, IPC, file system integration).
Domain familiarity: energy systems, grids, PyPSA, OR/optimization workflows, or scientific/engineering software UX.
Proven track record of meaningful open-source contributions

No university degree required - your experience, judgment, communication, and craft matter most. However, a degree may be a bonus.

✨ What We Offer

A flexible, fully-remote work environment where you’re trusted to work very autonomously. Zero micro-management, as that goes against our culture.
The opportunity to support hardworking, passionate, busy leaders who value and respect your contributions, and are working to create positive societal change in the energy sector.
A culture that values transparency, empathy, trust, humility, diversity, collaboration, and recognition.
We have an open-door policy, and value reciprocal feedback. You’ll always know where you stand, and always have the ability to have your voice heard, simply by reaching out.
A pretty flat hierarchical structure, where titles are not emphasized, and all contributions are valued.
Competitive salary with growth potential. Any relevant benefits depend on your region of residence.
Supportive onboarding and training, tailored to your strengths, interests, and career ambitions.
The ability to be part of our formation! We’re still growing, changing, and improving. Anyone who is part of our team now is able to meaningfully contribute towards our culture, and processes. We’re open to all suggestions, and take them seriously!

📝 What Our Hiring Process Entails

We take hiring seriously, and want to bring on candidates who will contribute positively towards our culture just as much as they will succeed in their roles.

Also, we don’t only want to have good outcomes from you. We also want you to feel happy and fulfilled in your position. That means we have a structured process to determine best fit. Our hiring process is as follows:

Candidates apply via Greenhouse, and include as much information as possible and comfortable.
Various team members of OET will shortlist candidates in our ATS.
Certain shortlisted candidates will be contacted to arrange a screening call.
Screening calls are conducted, and feature a max. 15 minute chat with our People Team.
Certain candidates will go through to a first-round interview, of max. 1 hour, with your prospective future manager. This interview will focus on role fit specifically.
Finalists will go through to a second-round interview, of max. 1 hour, with a panel, led by our Head of People. This interview will focus on culture fit and values.
Bonus round - there may be a short, take-home, written assignment, depending on the role.
The chosen candidate will be provided with an offer letter, and opportunity to ask any questions. Thereafter, contracts will be signed.
Onboarding with our People Team begins.
Your start date arrives!

➡️ How to Apply

If you're excited to bring clarity and efficiency to the chaos of the lives of our senior leadership team, we’d love to hear from you!

Please submit an application via Greenhouse (our ATS), and include the following:

Your resume (CV) in English, including information about prior work and education, and current skills
A short cover letter explaining why this role is a great fit for you (feel free to add a bit of personality if you wish)
A link to your LinkedIn profile, GitHub profile (if you have one), and any other social profiles or portfolios you wish to include
Any relevant written references or testimonials (optional, but appreciated, and may give your application a boost)
Your gross salary expectations, annually, in Euros (EUR)
Your notice period/available start date (including any leave you may wish to take before starting a new role)
Any special needs requirements that may apply

If you have any questions about OET or the role, we’d be happy to answer them should we invite you to take part in a screening call or interview.

Please note that due to the volume of applications we receive, we are not able to respond to individual emails or LinkedIn requests. Kindly submit your application via Greenhouse, and we will shortlist and reach out to candidates.

If you have not received a response within 8 weeks of submitting your application, please consider it unsuccessful at this point in time. We may, however, still reach out in future. Our team maintains Talent Pools, containing candidates shortlisted for contact for future roles that may arise.

Deadline to apply: None (ongoing, so long as this role is live on our website)

We look forward to meeting the next person who will become an invaluable part of our team! Thank you for your time, and for considering joining OET.

If this role is not for you, feel free to check back later for any future positions that may have been posted.