Skip to the job details if you have already read our general introduction

Who are we, and what do we do?

The Solar Monkey Story: Powering a Brighter Future

We are Solar Monkey and our story is one of integrity, innovation, passion, and dedication to a sustainable future.

Our journey

Our journey started at the Technical University of Delft, where a ragtag team of solar enthusiasts came together with a shared vision: to make solar energy accessible and efficient for everyone. We knew that to accomplish this, we needed to revolutionise the way solar businesses operate.

With relentless determination, countless hours of research and missteps, and a commitment to excellence, we developed Solar Monkey, a game-changing software solution that would redefine the solar industry.

For more, see our main About Page.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Solar Monkey, diversity, equity, and inclusion are the cornerstones of our company culture. We’re committed to creating a welcoming, safe space where people of all backgrounds, abilities, and experiences are valued and celebrated.

For more, see our main Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page.

How do we work?

We combine in-person and online communication (through Basecamp & Zoom) – where it might not surprise you that the business side leans toward the former and the development team leans a bit toward the latter form of communication. This enables a very flexible working place. Nobody tells you where or when to work, trusting that you know best how to build on your own strengths. This also means that working remote or part-time remote is common. Most of our developers work a few days a week in the office and the rest from elsewhere.

We have Product Managers and a UX Designer to find out where the value lies and what is viable for the business. For new features and iterations they will team up with a (senior) developer to ensure it is feasible to build, and roughly in what time frame. We then follow Kanban to actually deliver the work. We currently have a weekly release cycle, in which we test and deploy to production. (We do envision that to become true continuous delivery in the coming year.)

Do know that nothing is set in stone, and we strive to optimize for developer friendliness. Do let us know what that would mean for you in your application!

What we offer

Lots of impact on our product, our culture and the solar world!
Lots of freedom in terms of when and where you work, and how you solve problems. This means we accept fully remote people, as long as you can work in reasonable overlap with our normal (Dutch) business hours. It also means options for 4-day work weeks or shifting around your schedule because the kindergarten is not helping out. (Or just because it gets too hot in the afternoon ;).
A healthy workplace where you regularly work the number of hours you signed up for, and where you are able to get 8+ hours of sleep.
A fun team that values long-term thinking and self-empowerment and that is eager to continuously improve.
We’re a scale-up and can offer a competitive salary for Dutch market standards, depending on your skills and experience of course…. In addition to that we offer Stock Appreciation Rights, so that you can benefit from the growth of the company as well!
The chance to learn exciting new things, whether that’s new patterns, picking up a different language, GIS systems or server infrastructure!
A study budget of 4% of your base salary
We facilitate your pension plan. (We don’t yet match your own contribution, which is something we do want to instate in the future.)
5% Days! A day per month or so we work on whatever we want as developers, and try out new libraries, approaches or other things.
We can arrange a visa if you want to come to The Netherlands and fall into the “highly-skilled migrant” category.

Read our general vacancy introduction if you haven’t yet.

About the job

Our SaaS product is one of the leading packages in the Solar Engineering space in Europe. It is built by a team of talented engineers, eager to improve their craft in a collaborative culture of open communication. We have a target to almost double the whole team before the end of the year and are looking for an Engineering Manager to help guide the team towards achieving this.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is €60-75k per year (excluding 8% holiday pay), depending on skill and experience level. Besides that we offer Stock Appreciation Rights and a 4% learning budget. You’ll get an Apple Macbook Pro (M1) to work on.

Who are we looking for?

Solar Monkey is looking for a technical leader to inspire, mentor and grow an effective team of software engineers in a fast paced environment. You have a background in software engineering and your passion for problem solving will be pivotal in helping us scale our team, processes and product. You promote high standards, leading the team by creating a challenging environment and providing the support and guidance needed to succeed.

You can live anywhere, as long as you have 6 hours of working hours overlapping with the CET (Amsterdam) timezone (without you working graveyard shifts).

Responsibilities

Setting clear goals with the team and driving great execution to deliver on them.
Manage, mentor and lead a team of 6-10 engineers, a mix of junior to seniors.
Guide the team to adopt healthy development practices in a fast-paced environment.
Promote a supportive culture of engineering excellence.
Assess the status and progress with a data-driven approach; finding the right metrics and putting forward initiatives to improve on them.
Drive hiring efforts to grow our distributed engineering teams.

Qualifications

We do not expect you to tick all of the boxes, but to be comfortable with some and eager to develop yourself in all aspects.

Multiple years of experience managing an engineering team.
Experience working with remote and distributed teams.
Experience with a modern software development lifecycle process.
Knowledge of, and experience in at least two programming languages, and willing to learn Python and/or Javascript.
A strong technical background and ability to facilitate software design and architectural discussions.

The application process

Applying

Please apply here with a cover letter that describes:

Who you are.
Why you? What will you bring to Solar Monkey?
Why this job post and not another?
What relevant work you have done. Preferably something you are excited about.

Please limit it to 500 words or so.

Phone screen

If your application is clear and seems to match what we have in mind, we will call you for a short (20m) phone call. Otherwise we will let you know by email, if possible with some helpful feedback about the reason of rejection.

1 hour interview

This is a remote interview with two developers from our side. We will discuss your background and experience and leave some room for questions from your side.

2 hour interview

In this (real-life or remote) session we will dive a bit deeper into your experience and skill level with two other interviewers. Again, there will be enough room for questions both ways.

Reference calls

We will ask for several references to get a more extensive picture of you besides what we can learn in a couple hours of interviewing.

Agreement

Already after the 1 hour interview we will share with you our possible offer, in order to prevent the case where you do pass the interviews but in the end we cannot agree on the terms of working together. This potentially can prevent both of us from wasting time if we are far apart on the details. We will finalize this after the 2 hour interview.