Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Description

About Base

Base is America’s next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization–electricity–by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

We're building BaseOS — the operating system that runs the modern power company. It coordinates thousands of distributed batteries, powers our internal operations, and enables us to deliver reliable, low-cost electricity at scale.

As a senior, staff, or principal engineer on this team, you won't just build services — you'll define how the system works. You'll make architectural calls that other engineers build on top of, set the technical bar for the team, and take end-to-end ownership of the systems Base depends on every day. You'll be trusted to operate with minimal oversight on ambiguous, high-stakes problems — and to know which problems are worth solving in the first place. Your decisions will directly shape how power flows across the grid.

America's power grid is failing — electricity costs have risen even as generation gets cheaper, and blackouts are becoming more common. We're building the software that fixes it. Our team owns the entire stack: firmware that controls batteries in thousands of homes, trading algorithms that buy and sell power in real-time markets, distributed commanding systems that orchestrate a growing fleet as a single grid asset, factory software for our Austin manufacturing line, and the product experience that makes it all invisible to homeowners. If you want to write code that physically moves electrons, ships hardware, and reshapes critical infrastructure, this is the job.

Please note: Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.

Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.

Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.

Everyone’s an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.

Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.

Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It’s not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.

Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.

Responsibilities

• Own critical systems at scale: Design, build, and operate the core services BaseOS runs on. You're accountable for their reliability, performance, and long-term direction — not just their uptime today
• Set architecture and standards: Make foundational decisions on system design, data models, and service boundaries across teams. Raise the bar for how the org builds and ships software
• Operate across the stack: Work in Golang and Python across backend systems, APIs, and infrastructure, moving fluidly between application logic and the infrastructure underneath it
• Build systems that coordinate the real world: Design workflow systems (e.g., Temporal) that manage deployments, device control, and operational processes across a growing fleet
• Treat infrastructure as a product: Use Terraform and AWS to build infrastructure that's reliable and repeatable at scale, not just for one project
• Work across domains: Partner directly with hardware, deployments, and operations leadership to solve problems that don't fit neatly into software — and turn real-world constraints into clean system design
• Set the pace and the bar: Make decisions with imperfect information, take responsibility for outcomes, and help less-senior engineers do the same
• Mentor and multiply: Level up the engineers around you through code review, design feedback, and technical leadership — your impact extends beyond your own output
• What You'll Bring
• 6+ years of professional software development experience, with a track record of owning and shipping production systems that other engineers and teams depend on
• Deep proficiency in a backend language (Go, Python, Java, or similar), with the judgment to know when "well-tested" is enough and when it isn't
• Real experience building and operating distributed systems in production — you've been paged for the failure modes you now design around
• Fluency with modern cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), including owning services that other teams rely on
• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar) and a track record of treating infrastructure as a first-class part of the product
• The ability to design systems end-to-end — from API design through implementation, operation, and eventual deprecation — with sound engineering judgment under ambiguity
• Product and business intuition: you weigh implementation against user experience, operational impact, and business outcomes, and you can explain the trade-offs to non-engineers
• A track record of cross-functional leadership — you've driven alignment across hardware, deployments, and operations on problems with no clean owner
• High ownership without needing to be asked twice, and a track record of stepping into ambiguity rather than waiting for it to be resolved for you
• Clear, direct communication and strong technical opinions, held loosely enough to change your mind when the evidence says to
• Bonus: experience with IoT systems, real-time control systems, workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal), or DevOps practices at fleet scale