Building Energy Modeler

Rewiring America is the leading electrification nonprofit, focused on electrifying everything in our communities. We're all in on electrifying where we live, work, learn and play. Supported by a world-class research team developing accessible, actionable data and tools for Americans across the country, Rewiring America is crafting the blueprint for Americans to achieve energy efficiency, tackle nationwide emission goals, improve health, save consumers money and build the next generation of the American workforce in clean energy.

The Opportunity and Position Summary

Rewiring America is growing rapidly. We are building a diverse and dynamic Research team with the aim of investigating, documenting, and sharing the full breadth of knowledge required to electrify our economy.

This role will be our in-house building energy modeling expert and all-around utility player, running energy models at scale and deploying them in support of Rewiring America’s tools to address household and community barriers to electrification. Your expertise will serve a critical role in our efforts to give every household, business, and community the insights they need to electrify everything.

This role reports to the Senior Director of Data Science.

What You’ll Do

• Become Rewiring America’s go-to expert on building energy modeling, including understanding and explaining the limits of the models, how we can best apply them in our products and how we can improve upon them to make electrification the default experience across the country.

• Develop building energy models that integrate your accumulated expertise and evidence with Rewiring America’s products and decision support tools.
• Work with a cross-functional team to build tools that provide electrification insights for every household, building, and community in the country.

• Inform and contribute to interactive dashboards that identify electrification opportunities, costs, and benefits.
• Write technical reports that summarize findings and methods. Be concise, but thorough. Tell interesting and engaging stories.
• Build relationships with subject matter experts around the country to validate and enhance your knowledge of key topics.
• Be in service of the team and the broader mission. Translate your expertise into useful things for a wide range of audiences and deliver recommendations to inform policy, communications, partnerships, product, and advocacy efforts
• Keep excellent notes. Know where to find that one great quote or data point when you need it.
• Continuously challenge your understanding and be prepared to absorb and integrate new perspectives.

Requirements

As a Rewiring America Building Energy Modeler, you will be driven by a belief in and commitment to our values, vision, and mission.

We hope to see a track record demonstrating humility, curiosity, energy, and a learner’s mindset. We hope you have elected to explore domains adjacent to your expertise, and have experience studying both the forest and the trees. You must be able to tell compelling stories with data, and care about the dissemination of your work, as evidenced by a public portfolio, paper trail, or thoughtful tweets. We are looking for a highly organized and driven individual, someone who recognizes that the stakes of what we are trying to accomplish depend on a high-functioning, passionate, and trusting team.

As a Building Energy Modeler, will play a critical role in Rewiring America as it evolves from its start-up phase into a scaled organization, joining a fast-paced team that operates with a sense of urgency. In a short time, we have established ourselves as a trusted, inspiring voice in the decarbonization space and begun making tangible headway towards our climate goals. In this role you would continue driving this progress, by applying building energy modeling methods with self-discipline and excitement to connect people and communities to their electric futures.

We are looking for the following Core and Preferred qualifications:

Core

• Commitment to the mission, policies, and goals of Rewiring America.
• Excellent building energy modeling skills, including experience with relevant tools (EnergyPlus / OpenStudio, Ekotrope, REMrate, Sketchup, Ladybug tools, Grasshopper, etc.).
• Proven quantitative and analytical skills, including experience with relevant tools (Excel, Python, Pandas, R, Numpy/Scipy, etc.).
• Ability to synthesize and distill important research findings and identify meaningful connections to the broader electrification context.
• Excellent communication ability across multiple formats (e.g., memos, reports and presentations) with an ability to understand the needs of your audience and deliver information in a concise and compelling manner.
• Track record of managing independent research projects, with a portfolio to prove it.
• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in science, engineering, economics, or social science or equivalent work experience.

Preferred

• Domain knowledge in climate, energy, environmental justice, public health, building science, utilities, and/or electrification.
• Programming skills (e.g., familiarity with git/GitHub, general API use, SQL, Javascript, etc.)
• Knowledge and experience with public building stock models (ResStock, ComStock, etc.).

Benefits

Commitment to Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Rewiring America values diversity in all its forms and is committed to inclusive and transparent recruitment, hiring and promotion processes. Candidates of diverse backgrounds and lived experience are strongly encouraged to apply.

Hiring Statement

Rewiring America is a project of Windward Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs. Windward Fund is committed to attracting, developing and retaining exceptional people, and to creating a work environment that is dynamic, rewarding and enables each of us to realize our potential. Windward Fund ‘s work environment is safe and open to all employees and partners, respecting the full spectrum of race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, political affiliation, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, and all other classifications protected by law in the locality and/or state in which you are working.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is $90,000-$120,000 commensurate with experience. Rewiring America also offers a very generous and competitive benefits package, including health coverage, retirement benefits, paid vacation, sick time and holidays and access to professional development resources.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package that includes 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance for employees (and their families). Employees are able to enroll in 401k retirement plan and are eligible for a 3% automatic contribution and up to a 3% employer match on 401k contributions. Employees are also eligible for pre-tax transportation benefits. Employees will receive 160 hours of vacation time, 80 hours of health leave, up to 2 days of casual leave, and 20 hours of volunteer leave annually. Employees will also receive 13 paid holidays throughout the calendar year (15 days during Presidential and Congressional elections). We have an office closure between Christmas and New Year. Employees are eligible for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave after 90 days of employment. Regular, full-time employees and part-time employees are eligible to take up to sixteen weeks of parental leave, in all cases related to birth, adoption, or foster care starting from the first day of employment. We offer access to professional development resources.

COVID-19 Policy

To center the safety and well-being of its employees, Windward Fund requires that any employee who is required to conduct in-person activities for their job must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 within four weeks of their start date. This position may require candidates to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Accommodations may be sought and approved in accordance with the law by contacting human resources at HR@windwardfund.org.