About the Origin Model
The Origin Model sits at the centre of Aurora's forecasting capability. It helps governments, investors and utilities make billion-dollar decisions on the path to net zero. The models span power markets across the globe, turning complex energy-system dynamics into robust, scalable software that underpins our market outlooks, client insights and software platforms.
The opportunity
This is a founding role. We are building the Origin Model Development team in São Paulo, and you will be its first technical leader.
You will lead a new cross-office squad: experienced engineers based in Oxford, plus São Paulo engineers you will help hire. You will set the working norms, help select the first hires, and earn technical credibility by contributing code from day one. You won't start alone: São Paulo is already Aurora's modelling hub for the Americas, and you will work alongside the established teams here.
This is a hands-on role. Writing and reviewing production code is the core of the job, and the leadership work builds on top of it.
The São Paulo role requires 3 days a week in the office. Building a new team requires consistent in-person presence, and you will work closely with the existing teams already based there.
Technical work
- Write and review production code alongside your squad.
- Co-design the squad's module boundaries and reusable interfaces
- Deliver new features and progressively migrate a Python codebase with the core optimisation in GAMS, solved with MOSEK, which we're progressively migrating.Design features general enough to serve multiple regions
- Use AI tools across the development workflow (writing, reviewing, testing, analysing code) and help build the agent workflows and tooling that raise the whole team's velocity.
Building and leading the squad
- Build the São Paulo side of the squad from the ground up: shape roles and interview candidates alongside the Modelling Software Engineering
- Line-manage the São Paulo-based engineers: 1:1s, performance reviews and ongoing development feedback.
- Run the squad's delivery: sprint cadence, stand-ups, retrospectives, and removing blockers.
- Keep Oxford and São Paulo working as one squad. Work is allocated by module and skills, never by location, and both sites have an equal voice in decisions.
- Make the most of the daily Oxford/São Paulo overlap window for real-time collaboration, and document decisions in writing so the whole team can follow them outside it.
- Work with peer squad leads to share work and avoid duplicated solutions, routing cross-cutting architecture decisions to the senior technical authority.
Required attributes:
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience writing production code.
- Proven technical leadership within a team: you have led technical work and made design decisions.
- Strong Python engineering skills (the primary language of the codebase).
- Solid software engineering fundamentals: clean module design, reusable interfaces, and the judgement to decompose a complex codebase incrementally.
- Hands-on experience with Agile / Continuous Delivery practices, ideally having helped a team improve its delivery maturity.
- Clear, direct communication: comfortable raising issues early, giving honest feedback and working across teams and offices.
- Practical experience with AI-assisted engineering and a point of view on where it adds real value.
- Professional fluency in English and Portuguese. English is the primary working language across both offices.
Desirable attributes:
- Experience in distributed or cross-office teams.
- Experience founding or being an early member of a new team, office or company.
- Knowledge of energy-system optimisation or numerical/mathematical optimisation (LP, MIP or equivalent).
- Energy market or power-systems domain knowledge.
- Experience in adjacent optimisation fields (operations research, quantitative finance, logistics) is also welcome.
Some of the benefits we include are:
- A fun, informal and international work culture
- A competitive salary package
- Access to regular coaching and mentoring sessions and the opportunity to learn from experienced professionals
- Access to the Aurora Academy, our training programme offering a range of opportunities to develop your skills within the responsibilities of your role and within the wider context of the industry
The Company is committed to the principle that no employee or job applicant shall receive unfavourable treatment on grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity.
The successful candidate would start as soon as possible. The team will review applications as they are received. Salary will be competitive with experience.
