Staff Software Engineer

Method is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for a client in the energy sector, a nonprofit that coordinates regional electrical-grid planning. The role focuses on building and maintaining software for transmission planning, including APIs, data processing, security, deployments, and collaboration with electrical engineers.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain APIs and back-end services in Java and Spring Boot that support the client’s transmission planning work
• Process, validate, and move large volumes of grid and planning data between systems, including batch job orchestration
• Design and implement security, authentication, and access control across services
• Own CI/CD pipelines, environments, and deployments, and keep systems observable through logging and metrics
• Work directly with the client’s electrical engineers to understand their problems, ask the questions that matter, and translate domain needs into technical requirements
• Work problems through on your own first, then bring options and a recommendation to the team
• Help the team prioritize when there is more to build than time to build it, and be clear about the trade-offs
• Use AI-assisted development tools to raise delivery speed, and review and test what they produce before it ships
• Mentor teammates and share what you learn about the domain so the whole team gets sharper

Requirements:

• 6+ years of experience building back-end systems and APIs
• A track record of learning new languages, codebases, and domains quickly and becoming productive in them
• Curiosity about how complex systems work, shown in what you've chosen to learn on your own
• Strong problem-solving skills
• Strong communication skills, including explaining technical ideas to experts from other fields and drawing out what they need
• Comfort reaching out to the client directly, without waiting for someone to do it for you
• Broad technical range across APIs, data, security, and infrastructure, rather than depth in a single layer
• Strong understanding of RESTful principles, with experience using OpenAPI standards, Swagger, and Postman to design, document, and test APIs
• Experience with API security, authentication, and authorization (e.g., OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, role-based access control)
• Experience working with relational databases (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle) and data-heavy workloads
• DevOps experience, including CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions), cloud platforms, logging, and metrics
• Hands-on use of AI-assisted development tools, with the judgment to validate their output
• Experience in agile development methodologies and tools for version control (i.e., Git, Bitbucket), continuous integration, and deployment
• Experience leading pieces of work and mentoring other engineers
• Java and Spring Boot strongly preferred
• Experience in the energy or utility industry
• Familiarity with power systems or electrical grid concepts such as transmission planning, power flow, or generation interconnection
• Proficiency with Python
• Experience with React and TypeScript for building user interfaces that consume APIs
• Experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
• Work well with others
• You love the journey as much as the destination