Engineering Manager — Data Platform & Back-End (EMS)

About the role Lead the engineering team behind the data platform and back-end at the heart of an EMS/PMS (Energy & Power Management System) product line for AI-era data centers — a platform that monitors and manages power systems (battery storage, switchgear, UPS, distribution, SCADA/edge) and optimizes energy across battery, grid, and HVAC load, with AI agents handling alarm response. The first production site goes live in Georgia soon, with a multi-site fleet rollout behind it. This is a rebuild, not a caretaking job: the data layer has been deliberately reset to be built lean and AI-native — real-time telemetry ingestion, a knowledge-graph digital twin of each site, normalization and validation pipelines, identity and access management. You own the architecture decisions, grow the team, and ship against a production deadline measured in months. You inherit a small senior nucleus (staff-level engineers plus a data security engineer, with a principal architect advising) and open headcount to hire against, primarily in the Atlanta area. What you'll doTeam leadership — lead, grow, and manage the Data Platform & Back-End team: day-to-day engineering management, hiring (2–3 immediate openings, Georgia-based), technical direction, and delivery accountabilityPlatform architecture — own the architecture of the reset data platform: high-frequency telemetry ingestion from site power infrastructure (meters, BMS/DCIM, battery systems), stream processing and normalization, time-series storage, and the ontology/knowledge-graph digital twin that downstream optimization and AI agents depend onIntegration — deliver the integration/connector layer against real site hardware and third-party building systems — the product’s most critical asset, since it integrates with existing operations tooling rather than replacing itDelivery — ship working software on a locked roadmap with 3-week sprints; surface risk early, cut scope deliberately, and hold the line on production readiness for site go-livesEngineering practice — build an AI-native engineering culture: AI-assisted development as the default, GitOps workflows, CI/CD discipline, observability designed in from the first commit — not retrofittedCross-team — coordinate with adjacent teams: optimization/analytics (your platform feeds their models), SCADA/edge, distributed back-end teams, and a central platform organization providing DevOps/QA execution What we're looking for10+ years in software engineering with 4+ years managing engineering teams — a hands-on leader who still reads code and designs systems, not a pure people managerDeep experience building and operating data-intensive backend platforms in production: streaming/telemetry ingestion at scale, time-series data, event-driven architectures, cloud-native services (Azure experience valued)A track record of shipping v1 platforms under real deadlines — you have taken something from architecture sketch to production, with a team you hired, and lived with the operational consequencesStrong opinions, loosely held, on knowledge graphs / ontologies, data modeling for physical systems, and API design; ability to win architecture arguments with evidenceDemonstrated adoption of AI development tooling in your own work and your teams’ — a core engineering competency, not an accessoryHigh-intensity operating mode: a formation-stage business with executive visibility, compressed timelines, and distributed teams across time zones — fast, responsive, and comfortable being measured on delivered outcomes Nice to haveDomain experience with energy systems, industrial telemetry/SCADA, IoT/edge, data centers, or other physical-world infrastructure softwareExperience with IEC/Modbus/BACnet-class protocols, historian systems, or building management integrationsPrior experience standing up a team or site in a new location; Atlanta-area network a plus