How to apply for Principal Engineer/Architect

About Bidgely

Bidgely is a pioneering climate-tech company that uses appliance-level analytics to help utilities and consumers optimize home energy usage, directly combating climate change. Its platform processes massive-scale energy data to deliver personalized insights, making it a unique blend of AI, big data, and sustainability. Working here means tackling some of the most challenging data engineering problems while making a tangible environmental impact.

About the role

As a Principal Engineer/Architect at Bidgely, you will own the end-to-end architecture of core platform components, from data ingestion to ML orchestration and serving, handling over 200 billion daily data points. You will provide technical leadership across engineering teams, define the platform’s evolution, and mentor senior engineers. This role is critical in ensuring Bidgely’s platform remains scalable, performant, and flexible as the company grows.

A typical day

A typical day might involve reviewing architecture designs for a new real-time data pipeline, mentoring a senior engineer on distributed systems best practices, and collaborating with product teams to align platform evolution with business goals. You’ll also spend time prototyping solutions for handling peak data loads and evaluating new cloud-native technologies to improve scalability.

Who Bidgely is looking for

• 9+ years of experience in backend/platform architecture, with a track record of designing high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems at scale (ideally handling billions of events daily).
• Deep expertise in data engineering stacks such as Kafka, Spark, HDFS, and NoSQL databases (Cassandra, ElasticSearch), plus cloud-native infrastructure on AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Proven ability to architect both batch and real-time processing pipelines, including DAG-based orchestration systems (e.g., Airflow, Dagster).
• Strong technical leadership skills, with experience mentoring senior engineers, reviewing designs, and driving engineering excellence across teams.

Tips for this application

• Highlight any experience with energy data or IoT analytics, as Bidgely’s domain is energy disaggregation—showing domain relevance will set you apart.
• Quantify your impact: specify the scale of systems you’ve architected (e.g., 'designed a pipeline processing 100B+ events/day') to demonstrate you can handle Bidgely’s 200B+ daily data points.
• Emphasize hands-on expertise with the exact tech stack mentioned (Kafka, Spark, Cassandra, etc.) and provide concrete examples of how you’ve used them to solve complex problems.
• Showcase thought leadership: include links to blog posts, talks, or open-source contributions that demonstrate your ability to influence technical direction.
• Tailor your resume to include keywords like 'DAG-based orchestration', 'real-time streaming', and 'cloud-native architecture' to pass automated screening and catch the hiring manager’s eye.

What to cover in your cover letter

['Your experience architecting systems at a scale comparable to Bidgely’s (200B+ daily data points) and how you ensured performance and flexibility.', 'Specific examples of leading technical teams, mentoring senior engineers, and driving architectural decisions across multiple teams.', 'Familiarity with Bidgely’s mission and how your work in data engineering can contribute to energy savings and climate impact.', 'Your approach to balancing batch and real-time processing, and how you’ve implemented DAG-based orchestration in previous roles.']

Research before applying

• Understand Bidgely’s core product: how appliance-level energy disaggregation works and the data challenges involved in processing smart meter data at scale.
• Research Bidgely’s tech stack and engineering blog (if available) to learn about their current architecture and recent innovations.
• Explore the energy analytics industry, including competitors and regulatory trends, to grasp the business context and challenges.
• Look into Bidgely’s company culture and values—especially around sustainability and innovation—to align your application with their mission.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• Design a scalable data ingestion pipeline that can handle 200 billion events per day with low latency and high fault tolerance.
• How would you architect a system that combines batch and real-time processing for appliance-level energy disaggregation?
• Discuss your experience with DAG-based orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow, Dagster) and how you’ve used them to manage complex data workflows.
• How do you approach mentoring senior engineers and fostering a culture of engineering excellence? Provide examples.
• Given Bidgely’s domain, how would you optimize storage and query performance for time-series energy data using NoSQL databases like Cassandra or ElasticSearch?

Common mistakes to avoid

• Avoid generic resumes that don’t highlight specific scale (e.g., 'large-scale systems')—Bidgely needs concrete numbers and technologies.
• Don’t focus solely on managerial experience; this role requires hands-on architectural expertise and deep technical knowledge.
• Avoid ignoring the climate impact angle—showing passion for sustainability and Bidgely’s mission can differentiate you from other technically strong candidates.