Forward Deployed Engineer

About Pravah

Pravah is innovating the first foundational model for the electric grid worldwide, addressing unprecedented challenges faced by one of the planet's most critical physical industries. Supported by Khosla Ventures, Pear VC, and Conviction, Pravah partners directly with state-owned electricity distribution and transmission utilities (DISCOMs) throughout India. Their mission is to convert fragmented operational data into actionable, decision-quality intelligence, supporting demand forecasting—including renewable energy prediction—weather analysis, network topology, and load flow computations.

Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be the crucial interface between Pravah's customers and product development teams. Embedded at DISCOMs across India, you will gain hands-on understanding of grid operations and data infrastructures. Responsibilities span applied data processing, extensive data engineering, geospatial analysis, and high-trust client collaboration.

Key Responsibilities

• Travel widely across Indian DISCOM locations, working alongside engineering, planning, and operations teams to grasp their data environments and operational challenges.
• Gather, clean, and organize extensive operational datasets—such as SCADA streams, smart-meter telemetry, GIS networks, billing information, and weather data—often covering multiple years and hundreds of millions of data points.
• Collaborate with machine learning and engineering teams to fine-tune and deploy models focused on demand prediction, renewable generation forecasting, network mapping, and load flow analysis, managing data inputs and outputs.
• Design and implement cloud-native data pipelines on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with engineering partners to operationalize these models for client use.
• Engage with utility leadership during procurement, compliance, and product deployment stages, from initial presentation to live implementation.
• Detect product inefficiencies and relay these insights back to the core engineering team for enhancement.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• Degree in engineering, computer science, or a quantitatively-driven discipline, with a strong emphasis on practical output over academic prestige.
• Solid programming experience in Python, proficiency with SQL and pandas, and familiarity with at least one machine learning framework such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, or PyTorch.
• Hands-on experience working with sizable, unstructured, and real-world datasets, and the persistence to resolve data inconsistencies.
• Comfortable with cloud platforms like GCP or AWS and adept with contemporary data tools.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Willingness and ability to travel nationally on potentially short notice to DISCOM offices.
• Demonstrated ownership mentality in projects, excelling at autonomous task execution.
• Strong problem-solving capabilities, including intelligent use of AI tools to enhance productivity, balanced with prudence to avoid critical failures.
• An approachable, amicable character fostering teamwork in a close-knit startup environment.

Preferred Experience

• Previous familiarity with the power, energy, or infrastructure sectors.
• Experience handling geospatial datasets and tools such as QGIS, GeoPandas, shapefiles, and geodatabase formats.
• Background in deploying or managing scalable software products.

Benefits and Opportunities

• Opportunity to create significant, tangible impact on India's electricity grid, with deployments affecting millions of consumers.
• Engagement with a wide range of technical challenges, from data engineering to geospatial analysis, ML collaboration, and infrastructure operations including frontend, backend, and DevOps.
• Direct collaboration with founders and senior experts from leading institutions like Stanford and Yale and top technology firms.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is between $20,000 and $30,000 per year.

Job Location

Positions are available in New Delhi, Vadodara, Jaipur, and Visakhapatnam.