Staff Engineer (Contract - 6 Months) | Overstory (2024)

Working to solve our climate crisis is the most important mission of our time, and the most exciting problem to be working on. Overstory’s mission is to help solve our climate crisis by providing real-time intelligence about the planet’s vegetation. In our first step toward this mission, we are applying machine learning to satellite imagery to track forests and vegetation. Today, we proudly partner with 40+ leading utilities worldwide, including 4 of the top 10 US utilities, to help reduce wildfire risk and increase grid reliability to prevent power outages.

We have already proven our business model and we’re all united behind our ambitious vision to scale up this model to help humanity and the planet. We closed a $14 million Series A, led by B Capitaland welcomingThe Nature Conservancy to our collective of climate-minded investors. This milestone includes additional investment and continued support from Convective Capital,Semapa Next,Bentley iTwin Ventures,Pale blue dot,CapitalT,Moxxie Ventures, andOverwater Ventures

If you want to have a real impact and solve some of the world's most complex challenges with advanced technology, come work with our talented and passionate team. Overstory is a remote-first company, with people living all over the U.S. and Europe.

Your responsibilities

As a Staff Engineer, you will work within the Vegetation Management Experience team to evolve a suite of web tools that enable utility companies to more effectively manage risks associated with climate change, wildfires and storms.

We are seeking improvement in the following areas:

  • Performance & Scalability: ensure that our product can handle 3x YoY growth
  • Accelerate time to value of new product capabilities
  • Reduce the amount of manual work required to ingest vegetation analysis into our customer facing tools

Here at Overstory our Staff Engineers are hands-on technical leaders whose influence extends beyond their team either through leading cross team initiatives, making technology choices for critical aspects of our technology platform or solving for critical technical challenges within teams enabling our business to achieve our rapid scaling plans (growing 3x YoY).

This role will start off being primarily team scoped solving critical scaling challenges. There is scope to expand remit as we grow.

What you will do

Technical Skills:

  • Broad and deep understanding of system design with an ability to select the correct paradigm/technology given the situation and constraints.
  • Develops a deep understanding of our business domains and how technology can be applied to drive business impact.
  • Innovates and introduces new technologies or methodologies.
  • Resolves complex technical challenges with innovative solutions.

Ownership:

  • Leads cross-team initiatives or leads on architectural system design at team level
  • Drives pragmatic technology choices/decisions making sensible trade offs in order to balance current and future business needs.
  • Defines coding standards and engineering best practices.
  • Evaluates and recommends new tools and technologies.
  • Hands-on contribution

Leadership:

  • Mentors and coaches engineers.
  • Influences technical decisions at the organizational level.
  • Collaborates with product managers and CTO to inform how technology can influence or enable the product strategy.

About You

  • Experience of working in a high growth scaleup environment
  • Product minded and able to demonstrate significant impact you have had on a business through the application of technology
  • Proven experience of full stack development across the following (or similar) technologies: React/Typescript, Python/fastAPI, Postgres DB, Data pipelines)
  • Comfortable working in a build it, run it environment (GCP, cloud run, grafana, k8s) - or similar.
  • Ability to design and implement scalable and resilient systems.
  • Strong leadership skills with the ability to mentor and coach engineers at all levels.
  • Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively in a cross-functional team environment.
  • Passion for learning and staying updated with evolving technologies and industry trends.
  • You are based in GMT/ CET time zone. Open to US ET for those that are able to have significant overlap with GMT/ CET working hours.

If you don’t meet all of the above yet feel you have lots to offer, please apply.

Nice-to-haves

  • You can demonstrate experience scaling large distributed architectures.
  • You have experience in working in a remote-first environment.
  • You have worked with satellite data and/or imagery.

What you get

  • To be part of truly mission-driven work that reduces wildfires, protects earth’s natural resources and helps solve our climate crisis.
  • Flexible working environment with a lot of autonomy. We build our work days around our lives, not the other way around.
  • Other benefits like a remote working budget, an educational budget and time to develop new skills.
  • To be surrounded by an excellent, vibrant, smart team who have each other's back and believe in a culture of openness, tolerance and respect.
  • Equity and a competitive salary.

About our team

We are a group of 62 people from all over the world. Fifteen nationalities are represented in our team. We work remotely from nine different countries and we are looking for candidates that are also living and working in one of these countries: United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, Estonia, Portugal, France, Sweden and Canada.

Diversity & Inclusion

We place enormous value on diversity and inclusion and strive to continually bring in people of all genders, races, creeds, ethnicities, abilities and backgrounds. We believe that the best ideas emerge when people with different perspectives and approaches work together on a problem.

We’re always looking to diversify our team further, but we’re proud of the fact that four out of the nine people on our leadership team are female, 46% of the overall team are female and 20% of the team are people of color. Our team speaks fifteen languages: English, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Luxembourgish, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Indonesian, Cantonese, Estonian and Korean.

Our values

Tackling the climate crisis is our greatest mission.

We act with urgency.

Our curiosity fuels our growth.

We recognize that change is constant, and we find joy and power in exploration.

We’re rooted in diversity.

Just as ecosystems need biodiversity to thrive, our resiliency comes from our differences.

We care for each other.

We love the power of machines but we nurture each other as humans.

Trust is fundamental.

We assume the best in everyone, and we share ideas openly so that we have a positive impact.

Staff Engineer (Contract - 6 Months) | Overstory (2024)

FAQs

What does 6 month contract to hire mean? ›

Ever heard of “temp to hire”? That's what we're talking about here. In the business world, the contract-to-hire meaning is a short-term role with the possibility of becoming a full-time, permanent position when the contract concludes.

Is it worth taking a 6 month contract? ›

It offers valuable experience

Even if you're ideally looking for a permanent role, fixed-term employment might add real value to your CV. Also, there might be a chance of being offered a permanent position if you do a good job.

What is a 6 month term contract? ›

If you hire an individual on a 6 month fixed term contract it doesn't mean that you lose that employee when the 6 months are up. Employees can have their fixed term contract extended when it is nearing completion, or be offered a permanent role at any point during the contract.

Why do companies do 6 month contracts? ›

Choosing which type of contract to use depends on a company's growth goals and talent needs. Fixed-term contracts are best for companies with temporary work needs. They might use fixed-term contracts to hire seasonal staff, consultants, or talent to fill in for permanent employees on long-term leave.

What is a 6 month contract called? ›

Fixed-term contracts give a set end date, for example six months or one year. You may want to consider this type of contract if you're looking to cover maternity leave, staff a big project, or take on interns.

Is a contract to hire risky? ›

Committing to long-term employment with an employee can be risky, especially if you don't know how they perform. Contract to hire allows you to bring on the employee for a short time and then decide whether or not to offer them a full-time role after evaluating their performance.

Can I terminate my contract after 6 months? ›

Firstly, the initiating party must provide written notice of termination to the other party. Secondly, a notice period, ideally agreed upon mutually, must be observed, with a maximum duration of three months as per the law. Seeking legal advice is advisable if agreement on the notice period is challenging.

Do contract jobs look bad on resumes? ›

Contract work is legitimate experience, so don't forgo it on your resume. Just make sure you're listing it correctly. In this article, you'll learn how to put contract work on your resume in a way that emphasizes your flexibility, adaptability, professional skills, and achievements.

What are the disadvantages of a temporary contract? ›

Cons: Job Insecurity: Perhaps the most significant drawback of temporary work is the lack of job security. Temporary employees may face uncertainty regarding the duration of their employment and the possibility of not having a job once the assignment ends. Although often temporary work leads to a permanent position.

What is a 6-month clause? ›

For example, in a 12-month tenancy agreement that has a 6-month break clause within it, both the tenant and the landlord can end the tenancy agreement after a period of six months has passed from the start date of the same tenancy agreement.

What does 6-month term mean? ›

Six months means a period of 180 consecutive days, recognised either from a specific start date or as half of a calendar year.

Can you leave a contract job early? ›

Yes, of course, you can. Technically, no one can force you to work against your will, and you have the right to quit your job anytime for any reason. But, your contract probably specifies whether you have to give your employer notice and any penalties there may be for resigning early.

Should you accept a contract job? ›

Should You Take a Contract Job? You should take a contract job because contract work provides additional experience, knowledge, skills, and gives you more control of your schedule. A contract assignment also gives you the opportunity to work in different industries within a relatively short period of time.

Is it bad to leave a company in 6 months? ›

Short job tenures can be perceived as a lack of loyalty or commitment, and it can even indicate poor performance. Employers may see this as a red flag and believe you may not be worth the investment of training and acclimating you for a job you might not be in for the long term.

What are the pros and cons of being a contract employee? ›

Many contract workers enjoy their flexible schedule because it allows them to work multiple jobs, care for children, or simply have greater control over their time. The downside is that they won't earn overtime or a supplemental pay rate if a specific project takes longer than expected as stated in the contract.

Can you quit a contract to hire? ›

Yes, you can always quit, but your contract might stipulate how. Always review your contract to see what steps to take to quit your contract job. Giving notice is a must. Aim for at least two weeks.

What does work for hire mean in a contract? ›

A work for hire, or work made for hire, refers to works whose ownership belongs to a third party rather than the creator. Under general copyright principals, a copyright becomes the property of the author who created the work.

What is the difference between a contract hire and a lease? ›

End-of-Term Options: Finance leases doesn't include options for the lessee to purchase the asset at the end of the lease term. They can sell the asset and make a profit verses the balloon payment. Contract hire agreements typically offer options to return the asset or extend the lease.

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