Director of Software Engineering and Machine Learning
Thalo Labs
Software Engineering, Data Science
New York, NY, USA
USD 190k-240k / year + Equity
Posted on Jun 14, 2025
Founded by NASA, Google, Sidewalk Labs, Waymo, and Cruise experts, Thalo is a tech-enabled services company transforming the HVAC industry with next-generation sensing and AI-powered intelligence. Heat pump and other HVAC failures cost billions in emergency repairs and wasted energy annually, and are managed by an increasingly short-handed labor pool. Thalo is building an AI-powered platform transforming static assets into self-monitoring, high-performance systems, empowering technicians to shift from reactive fixes to proactive service.
Our team has built self-driving cars at Waymo, worked on satellite imagery at Google, designed systems for John Deere, developed space missions for NASA, led manufacturing design for Boom Supersonic jets, and more. We are united by our shared goal of making products that help us decarbonize today and accelerate drawdown globally at the intersection of cutting edge, robotics-inspired hardware and the built environment.
Our ideal candidate is excited to operate at both the leadership and tactical levels, jumping between hands-on engineering work and higher level strategy work. This role will be responsible for leading our software engineering team and improving the experience of Thalo products by defining and driving the software engineering roadmap, integrating ML models into our platform, mentoring existing team members, and partnering closely with our CEO to iterate on our product vision. If you’ve led software engineering teams with a hands-on approach at a startup, we’d love to talk!
What We Offer
- An immediate opportunity to make an impact fighting climate change with a mission-driven team.
- An in-person, collaborative culture. In our midtown Manhattan office, we not only have a stocked pantry but we also dedicate time to connect with each other during weekly happy hours and quarterly offsites.
- National subsidized healthcare plans for medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Additional benefits include a 401(k) program, 12 weeks paid parental leave, and paid time off
- Free, anonymous mental health and coaching appointments through Lyra.
- Thalo Labs believes everyone should be compensated fairly. At our ground-floor stage, our compensation structure places a strong emphasis on the value of high equity, with an annual base salary ranging from $190,000-$240,000.
What You'll Do
- Own and execute Thalo’s software product strategy in partnership with the hardware, leadership, and GTM teams
- Architect and develop AI enabled HVAC monitoring and analytics products that deliver automated insights to customers on a daily, weekly, and monthly cadence
- Research, develop, and implement ML models in production environments to enhance the performance of Thalo’s software platform
- Mentor, grow, and lead a high-performing team while maintaining strong engineering practices.
- Continuously build and improve software infrastructure for large-scale data ingestion, storage, transformation, and analysis.
What You Have
- 7+ years of experience working as a software engineer and 2+ years experience leading engineering teams, preferably in an early stage startup environment.
- Extensive experience and knowledge working in a hardware-driven product ecosystem, such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, or IoT devices.
- Experience developing, deploying, and managing large-scale web and data-intensive applications.
- Experience researching and implementing ML models in customer facing products
- Comfort with our tech stack (React, Typescript, Python, Pandas, Django, Terraform, AWS, etc.,)
- Prior experience and a passion for leading and mentoring engineering teams.
- Even if you don’t meet all the requirements listed above, we still encourage you to apply. We’re interested in meeting with a broad array of candidates.
Bonus Points
- A passion for tackling climate change and promoting sustainability
- BS, MS or PhD in Computer Science or related field
- Background with containerized microservices and distributed systems
Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:
Thalo Labs is committed to diversity and building an equitable and inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and experiences. We think that a diverse team is critical to Thalo's success. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, and people with disabilities.
Don’t worry if you don’t tick every box, we still would like to hear from you. We are building a diverse and balanced team that complements each other while covering the critical skills and experience