Director, power applications

Karman is a fast-growing NVIDIA-backed AI company enabling AI data centers to dynamically orchestrate power and unlock more compute capacity from existing energy infrastructure. For over a decade, we have applied AI to the electric grid, bringing real-time visibility and power-flow control to complex energy infrastructure. Our Karman platform, built on a custom NVIDIA module, brings that same capability to AI data centers, giving operators a way to better use the power already available to them.

The team

The Power Applications team takes power orchestration algorithms from idea to production. We develop, ship, and maintain the applications that run on Karman to solve power management problems and orchestrate control actions in real time in megawatt-scale data centers. We own the decision layer of Karman’s real-time control loop: turning live power telemetry into power management commands fast enough to keep data centers safe and fully utilized.

Our scope requires us to blend research and development with continuous delivery. The team is a mix of data scientists, algorithms engineers, software engineers, and AI infrastructure engineers, organized into two complementary groups. Research and development proves and matures new control, estimation, and forecasting capabilities and builds the evidence to decide what moves into the product. Continuous delivery turns that validated theory into reliable, deployable software and keeps it performing in the field.

The role

The Director, Power Applications leads this team and owns its outcomes on both workflows, reporting to the VP of AI and Applications.

The job sits at the interface between research and implementation. On one side you lead scientists and senior algorithms engineers working on open problems, where the hardest questions are how to interpret, prioritize, and resource work with ambiguous scope, and when to pivot, double down, or shelve. On the other side you lead principal-level software engineers shipping control software with hard reliability guarantees against committed product dates. Your job is to make those two sides one program: research framed so that it produces decisions on time, results that move into production as deliberate increments, and field performance that feeds the next research question.

You are also the team's single point of contact for planning and reporting. You partner with Product and technical program management on roadmap commitments, keep the technical roadmap visible alongside the product roadmap, and make the trade-offs between delivery, research, and requests for proof points and demonstrations explicit, with their costs stated. You manage the team's dependencies on neighbouring teams, in particular the data products the control loops consume and the actuation path through which they act, and you represent the team to leadership, customers, and partners.

This is a technical leadership role. Your leverage comes from the technical leads you develop, the standards you hold, the program you run, and your ability to keep cross-functional work moving. The team is growing, and much of the first year is hiring and building the structure, routines, and boundaries that let it run without you in every conversation.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of Karman's power control and orchestration applications, from research to production performance
• Manage and develop the team's technical leads, data scientists, algorithms engineers, and software engineers
• Set the research agenda with the research technical lead, balancing technical direction against business needs and resources
• Hold research to decision deadlines: define what done looks like, and make evidence-based calls to pivot, shelve, or double down
• Deliver the product plan of record with the software technical lead, holding the bar on quality, release gates, and operational ownership
• Own the handoff between research and implementation in both directions, and the experiment environments and workflows that keep research productive
• Be the single point of contact for planning and reporting with Product and program management
• Balance the product roadmap, the technical roadmap, and requests for proof points and demos, stating trade-offs and costs plainly
• Manage the team's interfaces with neighbouring teams: data products, actuation, and system architecture
• Hire for open roles and build the structure and routines that let the team scale

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, physics, electrical, mechanical, or aerospace engineering, or a related quantitative field
• 10+ years building and shipping software or algorithms for physical or real-time systems, including 5+ years leading teams of senior engineers and scientists, with a track record of hiring and developing people
• Experience leading or directing a research or data science function: framing open-ended questions as decisions with deadlines, setting the evidence bar for outcomes, and moving results into production
• Experience leading a software delivery program on production systems with real release gates, reviews, and operational ownership, and the judgment to hold a quality bar under schedule pressure
• Enough depth in control systems, estimation, optimization, or applied statistics to challenge principal-level engineers and scientists, know when to trust them, and understand the whole program rather than its parts
• Strong planning and program management skills: setting milestones with product and program management, managing cross-team dependencies, and communicating trade-offs plainly to leadership
• Excellent written and verbal communication across product, engineering, and executive audiences
• The habits of a strong remote leader: proactive communication, thorough documentation, empathy, and assuming good intent

Nice to have

None of these are required.

• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) or equivalent research experience in control, estimation, optimization, applied mathematics, statistics, robotics, or a related field
• Hands-on experience with real-time or closed-loop control software on physical equipment, and the fleet operations around it: staged rollouts, observability, on-call
• Background in power systems, data center electrical infrastructure, energy, or another physical-world real-time domain
• Experience with GPU power management tooling, LLM inference serving, or edge computing on NVIDIA platforms
• Experience in a growth-stage company: scaling a team, introducing process and structure as it grows, and working with plans of record that treat the roadmap as a contract between product and engineering

Salary range

$210,000 to $240,000 base compensation depending on experience plus stock options. Salary will be commensurate with an individual's skills, training, years of experience, and in line with internal compensation bands.

Location

This position can be performed remotely from anywhere in the United States.

Our commitments

Karman values the diversity of our team. We provide equal employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy or childbirth, sexual orientation, genetics, genetic information, marital status, or status as a covered veteran or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws.

We are committed to:

• Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace that is welcoming, supportive, affirming and respectful
• Empowering employees to solve problems and work together to make a difference
• Providing mentorship and growth opportunities as part of a collaborative team
• A flexible work environment with flexible paid time off
• Competitive compensation and benefits, including health, dental, vision, and employer-match 401k