Python Developer at Octopus Energy

1 year ago Development & Programming Middle Full-Time

While we look after your energy supply today, we're also building technology that will define the industry's future, from the big ideas to the small.


Join Our Team

  • As industries go, none are quite so complex as energy. That's why we're looking for super-talented people to help us make it fairer, greener, and more affordable for people in the UK.
  • Expect tough challenges as we reimagine energy for the 21st century, building a service that really puts customers first. You'll enjoy variety, the freedom to innovate, and working with cool people who really know their stuff.
  • Join us on our mission to help fight climate change. At Octopus Energy everyone contributes to this.
  • Keep a look out for all our opportunities on our Careers Page and make sure to let us know what roles are of interest to you.

Be Part of the Team


Description

We do things differently. Our prices are fair and transparent, and we don't lock you into a contract, so you can leave at any time. In fact, we try to make everything as easy as possible for you, from the simplicity of our bills to offering customer service over email and social media at times that suit you — 8am‐10pm, 7 days a week.

The better choice, whether it's for your home, or your business

We provide an easy, affordable energy option for the UK's visionary businesses. Whether you're one of the world's biggest football clubs or selling magic wands in Brighton, we'll supply your business with power from the sun. We work with amazing brands like Arsenal FC and Marks & Spencer, helping legendary UK institutions lead the charge on sustainability nationwide.

Renewable energy as standard

We want to make the eco‐friendly choice the easy choice, so all of our tariffs use 100% green electricity — and they're no more expensive than our competitors' non‐green tariffs. You can also carbon offset the gas you use if you want to minimise your environmental impact even further. And we make sure today's renewables infrastructure keeps on turning, generating clean, green energy to power the UK. We're backed by Octopus Investments, the UK's largest investor in solar power, responsible for nearly 40% of the nation's large scale solar generation.

Energy fit for the future

While we look after your energy supply today, we're also building technology that will define the industry's future, from the big ideas to the small. In 2017, we launched Octopus Tracker, a UK‐first tariff championing price transparency like never before, offering fair daily rates based on the wholesale price of energy. Then, in 2018, we became the only supplier to really harness the potential of smart meter technology with Agile Octopus, a time of use tariff with half‐hourly rates allowing customers to adjust their consumption to times when the wholesale price of energy is cheapest. Next came Octopus Go, a tariff designed just for EV drivers, with a super cheap night rate so these early adopters of the future of green transport can always wake up fully charged.

And it's not just about your home energy: Octopus Electric Vehicles is helping UK drivers switch to greener cars, providing everything from the car itself to smart charging options. We're getting our world ready for this electric revolution with Powerloop, an EV leasing bundle introducing vehicle‐to‐grid charging to UK homes. Drivers use their cars to power their homes during times of peak energy demand to relieve pressure on the grid.

We've won awards

  • - Tree planting
  • - Agile report and shifting consumption outside of peak times
  • - Company whose done the most to advance renewables
  • - Best company to work for 2019

Tech/Product

Octopus Energy is a tech-focused energy supplier for the UK market and we’re are looking for diligent and thoughtful software engineers, of any level of experience, to join our growing team.

We're building "Kraken", a cloud-based energy platform for interacting with both consumers (via the web, mobile and smart-meters) and the industry (eg data flows, consumption forecasting, trading on the wholesale market).

Unlike our competitors, we're a tech-led company. We aim to use first-class software engineering and creative technology to innovate and provide industry-beating customer service.

For evidence of innovation, see our Agile Octopus tariff (the world's first half-hourly tariff)

1. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/feb/22/energy-company-promises-to-pay-customer-to-use-electricity

2. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/08/octopus-energy-tariff-customers-see-profit-margins-gas-electricity

As for customer service, see our Trustpilot reviews.

This is a rare opportunity to use technology to help fight climate change through helping the UK to use green technology and renewable energy sources.

Our team

All technology is written and maintained by a multi-discipline engineering team of around twenty people. This includes server-side, client-side and mobile engineers working closely with UX experts, copywriters and designers.

We follow a Kanban-like approach, using Google docs and Trello to specify and manage work; Github, CircleCI and Terraform Enterprise as part of an immutable-infrastructure, continuous delivery pipeline; and Loggly, Sentry and Cloudwatch to measure performance and monitor production.

Engineering standards are high. We pair program, thoroughly review and test code before it deploys, and maintain fast, high-value test suites. We have weekly tech talks, monthly blitz-days (eg sharpening our internal tools, upgrading dependencies) and can often be found at tech meet-ups and conferences.

Our coding conventions are open-source and we maintain a tech blog.

Octopus is a great place to learn, work with some talented engineers and level-up your skills.

Our technology

On the server-side, we mainly use Python. Most of our websites are powered by Django and the Django-REST-framework. We also use Pandas, Numpy and Jupyter for analysis and forecasting, plus Celery, RabbitMQ, SQS and Airflow for background processing.

We use AWS heavily, employing most of the "Hashistack" (eg Packer, Consul, Terraform) as part of a continuous deployment pipeline. See, for example, Django, ELB health checks and continuous delivery.

Client-side, we use React, Redux and SASS; our mobile apps are built using React Native.

Why you should work for us

This is a great opportunity for several reasons:

1. We have lots of difficult design challenges to solve. The UK energy market is complicated, outdated and process-heavy - there's an awful lot of domain modelling that we need to get right. Strong attention to detail is essential.

2. We have difficult technical problems to solve. With the advent of smart meters, we'll soon be processing millions of meter readings a day. We need the right technology in place to handle this smoothly as well as feeding data into a machine learning pipeline that models and predicts consumption.

3. There's a great opportunity for disruption in the UK energy market. The big suppliers still dominate, but are not exactly popular. The energy landscape is changing as we move to more dis-aggregated forms of generation, with less predictability, more dynamism and smarter technology. Octopus Energy were the first UK supplier to introduce a "tracker" tariff whose prices track the daily wholesale prices: http://www.cleanenergynews.co.uk/news/efficiency/octopus-offers-transparency-with-wholesale-price-tariff

4. You'll be working for a company that’s fighting climate change. Our parent company is the largest investor in solar generation in the UK, and are funding wind and anaerobic digestion. As a supplier, we're helping people to use greener technology and renewable energy, all helping move the UK towards a lower carbon future.

Why we're different

  • - Octopus Energy is only 4 years old - and as we scale we work extremely hard on maintaining agility and our ability to 'do more' than any other business in our sector
  • - We trust our employees but also give them appropriate leadership and oversight
  • - We point them in the right direction and then give them as high levels of autonomy
  • - We know that small teams of extremely motivated and capable people run fast
  • - Everyone in our business has equity options – we all work towards and share in our success in the whole Octopus Energy Group
  • - Our mission in energy and decarbonisation is real and we are all passionate about making it happen and you will find your colleagues share that passion
  • - Our customer-centricity is real - and we make decisions that foster long term value over short term gains

Power for the people and our people

Our people are the greatest asset behind our continued success. Our diverse range of people allows us to drive innovation and impress our customers whilst still having fun!

Our culture includes, flexible hours, support with career development, your own part of the business and more - which is why we've won awards on best place to work!

We put a big effort into attracting motivated, creative, and people who want to make a genuine change to join us on our mission of helping to fight climate change.

What You'll Get

  • - Equity Option Scheme (own part of the business)
  • - Pension Scheme - Employer 5% Employee 3% - you can opt to contribute more!
  • - Flexible working environment
  • - Cycle to Work Scheme
  • - Fruit and decent coffee
  • - Weekly Friday family dinner with food and drinks
  • - Regular social events (several parties a year including a Summer festival)
  • - Access to Hatch - Financial advice and planning for employees
  • - Childcare Vouchers
  • - Maternity and Paternity pay
  • - Support to help with development as required (courses, learning, development)

If you this sounds like you and you have a genuine passion in the future of sustainability then we'd love to hear from you!

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