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Meet Kestrix

Globally, 10% of emissions come from heating and cooling buildings, and nearly 6 retrofits must happen every minute between now and 2050 for net zero targets to be met. Luckily, tech (like good old insulation) to fix the problem exists. But when resources required for such a herculean undertaking – labour, financial, time – are limited, how can we be sure we are starting with the right buildings? Allocating the right budgets? Doing the work well? 

The ‘Google Maps of Heat Loss’, Kestrix uses thermal drones and AI to construct 3D heat loss models of buildings and reveal retrofit pathways of buildings in seconds – for confident, data driven retrofit strategies. Our dataset of more than 10,000 buildings is already streamlining planning, prioritisation, and verification of retrofits for the portfolios of major enterprise clients like Islington Council, Clarion, Peabody, and E.ON.

We are looking for a software engineer as part of our growing platform team, led by CTO and co-founder Matt and reporting to our Head of Engineering Ash to lead development of critical algorithms and services across a range of frontier problems Including:

Thermodynamic simulation.

Calculating how heat escapes from a building. Creating digital twins that simulate the physical heat transfer processes, conduction, convection, and radiation. To build models that accurately predict energy performance and identify specific areas of heat loss.

3D mesh manipulation. 

Constructing and handling complex geometric models of buildings using drone-captured data to create accurate and usable 3D meshes compatible with thermodynamic simulations and visual analysis tools. Requiring novel approaches to cleaning, simplifying, and structuring 3D data.

Computer vision.

Designing and adopting algorithms to automatically interpret thermal imagery. Identifying key building features like windows, doors, walls, and roofs. Solutions are required to precisely align thermal data with corresponding surfaces on a 3D mesh, "painting" the heat loss map to power retrofit insights.

Classification and Retrofit planning.

Turning data into actionable advice. Identifying heat loss and classifying the type and severity of building problems. Using the full scope of detailed data to create archetypes for common building types, leading to an understanding of heat loss patterns and informing scalable and efficient retrofit planning.

Solutions in these areas will likely start by using heuristics and statistical methods with the opportunity and ambition to bring in machine learning over time.

A successful candidate is a self-starter, passionate about applying their software skills to solve the urgent problem of building decarbonisation in a fast paced and dynamic startup environment.

Job responsibilities

• Take ownership of the end-to-end development and implementation of services within Kestrix’s core platform. 
• Participate in the design and architecture discussions, contributing your ideas and insights to ensure the scalability, reliability, and performance of our software.
• Develop and validate novel approaches in potentially unfamiliar domains to solve complex challenges in our core problem spaces.
• Automate and manage the deployment of large-scale services and data processing services, ensuring high availability and performance across the platform. Ensuring the smooth delivery and deployment of new features and updates
• Design and implement machine learning models and algorithms to extract and sequence actionable insights from diverse data streams, including 2D imagery and 3D geometric data.
• Implement and maintain data processing pipelines, integrating external data sources, ensuring the efficient flow of information between different components of the system.
• Write clean, efficient, and maintainable code, following industry-standard software engineering practices.
• Conduct thorough testing, debugging, and troubleshooting of the software, identifying and resolving any issues or bugs that arise.
• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the business goals and objectives of Kestrix, aligning technology strategies and initiatives to support and drive these objectives forward.
• Conduct research and stay up to date with the latest advancements and trends in software engineering, and related fields, leveraging this knowledge to enhance Kestrix's technologies and stay ahead.

Job requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant STEM discipline.
• 5+ years of software development in a commercial business
• 2+ years of Python development experience.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Demonstrated end-to-end project ownership, successfully taking initiatives from initial problem definition through R&D, planning, development, launch, and acceptance monitoring. 
• Demonstrated experience in applying statistical or machine learning techniques to unstructured data, particularly with image and geometric datasets.
• Proficiency with data science or machine learning libraries in Python (Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow).
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles, including object-oriented programming, data structures, algorithms, and design patterns.
• Ability to quickly learn and adapt to new technologies.
• Experience with software development tools and practices, including version control (e.g. Github), agile methodologies, and issue tracking systems (e.g. Jira).
• Understanding of software testing principles and experience with automated testing frameworks and methodologies.
• Understanding of CI/CD processes and tools
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate and communicate technical ideas to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice-to-haves

• Knowledge of 3D geometry, computer graphics, 3D computer vision techniques.
• Knowledge of machine learning methods for image analysis, outcome prediction and making optimal recommendations
• Knowledge of building physics, thermodynamics concepts.
• Experience deploying and managing runtime environments in Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience managing cloud infrastructure at scale using Terraform or similar Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.
• Understanding of large-scale deployment strategies, container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and cloud platforms ( GCP, AWS or Azure ).
• Confidence with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices, ensuring the smooth delivery and deployment of new features and updates.