Director of Engineering

Director of Engineering About Ava Community Energy Ava Community Energy (Ava) is a Joint Powers Authority comprising Alameda County and its incorporated areas, and the cities of Lathrop, Stockton, and Tracy. Ava Community Energy's charter is to provide its customers with low carbon, cost-effective electricity that integrates innovative energy products and maximizes local benefits through the development of local solutions, ranging from increasing access to rooftop solar to supporting the adoption of electric vehicles. Culture and Commitment to Diversity Ava believes in a vibrant culture that supports and nurtures a workplace that offers every individual the opportunity to attain professional goals and contribute to accomplishing our mission. We foster a culture of open communication, responsibility, curiosity, accountability, and teamwork. We want creative problem solvers that are excited to work in an entrepreneurial environment and grow our organization! As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce that is reflective of our service area's rich culture and communities. We welcome a diversity of experiences, perspectives, and skills. We strongly encourage people of all characteristics to apply and prohibit unlawful discrimination and harassment of any type based on age, religion, color, gender identity or expression, race, ancestry, or national origin, religion or creed, marital status, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information or characteristics, and those with a disability as protected by federal, state and local laws. Position Summary Ava is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to lead and grow our Engineering team within the Engineering, Analytics & Salesforce (EAS) organization, reporting to the Head of Engineering, Analytics and Salesforce. This is a player-coach leadership role for a hands-on technical leader who can both set strategic direction and roll up their sleeves alongside the team. This role will have at least 3 direct reports. The Director of Engineering will own Ava Community Energy's engineering infrastructure, and lead a team of engineers and consultants through the implementation of our Google Cloud Platform roadmap, and drive the engineering execution and vision that underpins Ava Community Energy's data platform, APIs, energy market participation analytics, and software for Decentralized Energy Services (e.g., Virtual Power Plants and Smart Home Charging) and Local Development Programs (e.g., eBike incentive programs and kitchen electrification). This person will be the technical authority for how Ava builds, deploys, and governs its cloud infrastructure, and will play a central role in establishing engineering excellence across the organization. This is a high-impact role at a critical moment in Ava Community Energy's growth. Position Details Essential Duties and Responsibilities Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, manage, and grow a team of data engineers.
• Manage external consultants, providing technical direction, prioritization, and quality oversight.
• Recruit, hire, and develop engineering talent in line with Ava Community Energy's 3–5 year staffing plan.
• Own the engineering team's roadmap, sprint planning, and delivery cadence balancing near-term commitments with long-term architectural investments.
• Communicate engineering status, risks, and decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders including leadership and business teams. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Management
• Own and drive implementation of Ava Community Energy's GCP infrastructure roadmap operations overseeing cost management, IAM governance, security, resource hierarchy, and DevOps.
• Lead the implementation of GCP best practices including least privilege IAM, org policy enforcement, service account governance, and prod/dev/sandbox environment standards.
• Make architectural decisions for enhancing GCP infrastructure, including serverless, DevOPs, big data operations, efficient data management, logging and warnings, and cybersecurity.
• Lead with a culture of innovation within the GCP platform, with the constant evaluation of new GCP tools that can make the platform (and team) operate more effectively. Engineering: Best Practices, Roadmap and Collaboration
• Establish and enforce engineering standards across the organization including best practices in version control, code review, pull requests, DevOps, CI/CD, documentation, and discipline for production vs dev vs sandbox environments.
• Lead the transition from monolithic Github repos into smaller services, the transition from virtual-machines to serverless infrastructure (e.g.,Cloud Run), and continue supporting the development and use of microservices.
• Drive technical design reviews and architecture decisions, ensuring new systems are scalable, maintainable, and well-governed before they reach production
• Collabora