Principal Technology Engineer 

Type: Full-Time, Exempt

Location: Remote with occasional travel

Reports to: CEO

What We’re Looking For

We are seeking an experienced Principal Technology Engineer to provide hands-on coordination for OpenET's shared software, cloud infrastructure, and technical operations. This role is responsible for ensuring the long-term technical health and reliability of OpenET's software and services through direct technical contributions, cross-organizational coordination, and consensus-building technical leadership.

The ideal candidate is an experienced technical leader who is comfortable contributing directly to software and infrastructure while fostering a collaborative technical culture, strengthening engineering practices, reducing organizational risk, and helping diverse teams work together effectively across institutional boundaries. You have the interpersonal skills to guide technical discussions in ways that ensure contributors from multiple organizations are heard, while helping the team arrive at practical solutions that bolster the strengths of the OpenET Consortium as a whole.

Who We Are

OpenET empowers water management from local to global scales by delivering transparent, scientifically rigorous satellite-based evapotranspiration (ET) data. The OpenET Consortium partnership of scientists and researchers, each contributing from their own institutional home, includes leading national experts in remote sensing of ET, cloud computing, web design, and water resources and policy. The OpenET nonprofit (OpenET Inc.) is the operational and strategic backbone of OpenET, tasked with ensuring the reliability and expansion of OpenET data and impact. 

OpenET software and services have been developed over nearly a decade through collaboration among Consortium scientists and engineers. The OpenET developer team contributors bring deep technical expertise and a strong culture of collaboration, with much of our software developed through open-source or internally shared practices. 

Who You Are

• Thrive in a collaborative, mission-driven organization where success depends on trust, transparency, and shared ownership.
• Value open science, reproducible research, and responsible open-source software development.
• A hands-on technical leader who knows when to provide technical direction and when to draw out the expertise of others.
• Skilled at bringing together contributors across organizations, building consensus, and guiding technical discussions toward practical solutions.
• Committed to fostering a collaborative engineering culture through knowledge sharing, rigorous documentation, code review, and continuous improvement.
• Passionate about strengthening OpenET's long-term technical resilience by reducing organizational risk, sharing knowledge, and building redundancy.
• Communicate clearly, listen thoughtfully, and navigate complex technical discussions with professionalism and respect.
• Proactive, organized, and motivated to strengthen both OpenET's technology and the community that sustains it.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership & Coordination

• Provide technical leadership across OpenET's shared software, infrastructure, and cloud-based services.
• Coordinate technical work across Consortium Partners, contractors, and contributors spanning multiple organizations.
• Participate directly in software development, infrastructure improvements, architecture discussions, code review, and technical troubleshooting.
• Facilitate technical discussions that build consensus, support sound decision-making, and leverage expertise across the Consortium.
• Recruit, onboard, and mentor new contributors while fostering a collaborative engineering culture built on knowledge sharing, documentation, and continuous improvement.

Technical Operations & Infrastructure Stewardship

• Help maintain the reliability, scalability, security, and resilience of OpenET's production infrastructure and cloud-based services.
• Coordinate technical support requests, ensuring issues are routed, prioritized, and resolved in a timely manner.
• Identify recurring issues and support themes, working with the team to address root causes and improve platform reliability.
• Collaborate with the team to reduce technical debt and strengthen OpenET's infrastructure, development workflows, and operational resilience.

Documentation & Systems Management

• Promote documentation, cross-training, and knowledge sharing to reduce dependence on individual contributors and improve organizational resilience.
• Collaboratively develop and maintain technical documentation, workflows, engineering standards, and operational guidance.
• Promote code review best practices and collaborative software development workflows.
• Support the continued evolution of OpenET's technical governance, contributor onboarding, and engineering culture.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen collaboration, transparency, maintainability, and the long-term sustainability of OpenET's technical ecosystem.

What You’ll Bring

Required

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, cloud infrastructure, technical leadership, or a related field.
• Cloud computing experience, including deploying software to cloud infrastructure and troubleshooting applications in cloud-based environments, as OpenET's services run on large-scale cloud computing infrastructure.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Experience using Git and collaborative software development workflows (GitHub or similar platforms).
• Experience coordinating or leading technical work across distributed teams, organizations, or open-source projects.
• Demonstrated ability to build consensus and foster collaborative engineering practices.
• Strong systems thinking with the ability to balance immediate technical needs with long-term organizational sustainability.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Demonstrated honesty, professionalism, and integrity.

Preferred

• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Earth Engine (GEE).
• Experience contributing to or leading technical communities that span multiple organizations or institutions.
• Experience leading or contributing to open-source software communities.
• Experience with geospatial software, scientific computing, or remote sensing applications.
• Experience supporting production services, cloud-native infrastructure, and DevOps practices.
• Experience developing technical documentation, engineering standards, or governance processes.
• Familiarity with water resources, environmental science, climate technology, or public-interest software.
• Experience working within research collaborations, nonprofits, universities, or other multi-institution partnerships.

Compensation

Salary range: $140,000 - $170,000 USD based on skills, knowledge, and experience. 

Benefits: Competitive health benefits, paid holidays, paid vacation and sick leave, 401k with up to 5% employer match contribution, flexible schedule and remote work arrangements

Equal Opportunity Employer

OpenET is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected status. All employment is decided based on qualifications, merit, and organizational need.