Lead Performance Engineer

Position Overview

• Location Type: Hybrid
• Job Type: Full-time
• Salary: Not specified

Pine Gate Renewables is a leading renewable energy company focused on project development and strategic financing of solar and storage projects throughout the United States. The company’s Pine Gate Impact initiative contributes to multiple non-profit organizations aimed at improving the environment and local communities. Headquartered in Asheville, NC, Pine Gate Renewables made the Inc. 5000 list in 2021, placing at #37 and named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list in 2021. Pine Gate Renewables works every day to achieve its mission to “Get Solar Done.” For more information, visit pinegaterenewables.com.

Pine Gate Renewables is seeking a highly motivated Lead Performance Engineer with experience in solar operations for an opportunity to work on an evolving team charged with the optimization of 3GW+ of utility scale solar and storage assets. The lead performance engineer sits within the technical asset management team reporting into the VP of Fleet Performance and Operations. The candidate will share duties with the performance engineering team while working hand in hand with stakeholders to develop our data management infrastructure and performance optimization initiatives for asset management. This role will be central to a continuous effort toward further automating performance monitoring, reporting and diagnostics with a focus on actionable analytics.

Requirements

• Experience in solar operations
• Data pipeline development and maintenance
• Data cleansing methodologies
• ETL processes
• Statistical control processes
• Proficiency in Python and Azure cloud
• Dashboard development (e.g., Flask, Dash, PowerBI)
• Subject matter expertise in performance optimization and data science

Responsibilities

Data & Analytics:

• Develop and maintain automated data pipelines from various sources, focusing on reliability and scalability, to monitor asset performance and investigate underperformance across utility-scale solar and storage projects.
• Develop and implement data cleansing methodologies to ensure accurate and reliable performance data.
• Own the quality and structure of performance datasets through ETL, data validation, and statistical control processes leveraging tools to include python and azure cloud.
• Automate calculations for energy losses, performance KPIs (to include productivity, issue recurrence rates, response and RTS metrics), and investment opportunities. Champion this information with a focus on implementation for go-forward operations.
• Create dashboards, APIs, and tools to visualize and communicate priority opportunities with internal and external teams using Flask, Dash, and PowerBI, or other similar tools.
• Act as a subject matter expert and provide guidance on performance optimization, analytics, and data science-related matters.
• Develop and upskill the broader engineering team to leverage additional tooling and resources and expand team capabilities.

Operations:

• Support the reporting, and coordination, of work done to optimize the performance of the operating fleet including root cause analysis of production losses, failure quantification, and development of business cases for fleet investments.
• Develop and own energy models or digital twins for the operational fleet across the asset lifecycle.