How to apply for Software Engineer- Data Platform

About Uplight

Uplight is a mission-driven software company that creates a new category of energy by connecting homes and businesses to a more efficient and reliable grid. They manage smart thermostats, EVs, solar, batteries, and customer behavior to generate clean energy capacity, reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Working here means directly contributing to the clean energy transition while solving complex, large-scale data problems for leading utilities worldwide.

About the role

As a Software Engineer on the Data Platform team, you will build and maintain the infrastructure that ingests, processes, and analyzes massive streams of energy data from millions of connected devices. Your work enables real-time insights and automated energy shifting, directly impacting grid stability and carbon reduction. This role is critical to scaling Uplight's platform to support more utilities and devices, making a tangible environmental impact.

A typical day

You'll start your day with a stand-up to sync with your team on pipeline issues and feature progress. Then you might dive into optimizing a Spark job that processes smart thermostat data, or pair with a data scientist to add a new metric to the platform. Later, you'll review a pull request for a Kafka consumer, and perhaps join a design meeting for a new data ingestion service. Throughout, you'll collaborate with engineers and product managers to ensure the platform reliably supports Uplight's clean energy initiatives.

Who Uplight is looking for

• Proven experience building and operating large-scale data pipelines using technologies like Apache Spark, Kafka, or Flink, with a strong understanding of batch and stream processing.
• Proficiency in a modern programming language such as Python, Java, or Scala, and experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Background in data modeling, ETL/ELT design, and optimizing data storage solutions (e.g., data lakes, warehouses like Snowflake or BigQuery) for performance and cost.
• Familiarity with the energy domain or IoT data is a plus, but a passion for clean energy and solving complex data challenges is essential.
• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines for deploying data services.

Tips for this application

• Highlight any experience with real-time data processing or IoT data pipelines, as Uplight deals with millions of device events per second.
• Emphasize your ability to design for scalability and reliability, since the platform must handle utility-scale workloads with high uptime.
• Mention specific clean energy or sustainability projects you've worked on, even if not directly in energy, to show alignment with Uplight's mission.
• Use keywords from the job description like 'data platform', 'streaming', 'cloud', and 'energy' to tailor your resume for applicant tracking systems.
• If you have experience with utility data or demand response systems, call it out explicitly—it's a rare and valuable skill for this role.

What to cover in your cover letter

["Your motivation for working in clean energy and how Uplight's mission resonates with your career goals.", 'A specific example of a data pipeline you built that handled high volume or real-time data, and the impact it had.', "Your experience with cloud-native data technologies and how you've used them to solve scalability challenges.", "How you've collaborated with cross-functional teams (e.g., data scientists, product managers) to deliver data solutions."]

Research before applying

• Explore Uplight's product suite, such as their demand response and energy efficiency programs, to understand the data sources and use cases.
• Read about the challenges utilities face with grid balancing and how Uplight's solutions address them, to speak intelligently about the domain.
• Look into Uplight's engineering blog or tech talks to learn about their tech stack, architecture, and engineering culture.
• Research recent news about Uplight's partnerships or acquisitions to understand their growth trajectory and market position.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• Design a data pipeline to ingest and process real-time energy consumption data from smart thermostats, ensuring fault tolerance and low latency.
• How would you optimize a Spark job that's running slowly due to data skew? Walk through your debugging process.
• Explain how you would ensure data quality and consistency in a streaming environment where late-arriving data is common.
• Describe a time you had to make a trade-off between consistency and availability in a distributed system. What did you choose and why?
• How would you monitor and alert on the health of a data platform that serves both batch and streaming workloads?

Common mistakes to avoid

• Submitting a generic resume that doesn't highlight data engineering or distributed systems experience—this role is highly technical and specialized.
• Failing to demonstrate any interest in clean energy or sustainability; Uplight values mission alignment and candidates who are passionate about the cause.
• Not preparing for system design questions that involve real-time data and scalability, as these are core to the role.