Being a Simulation and Modeling Engineer at balena
We strongly believe that state-of-the art business modeling is a long way behind where it could be. A business is a system rather than a machine, nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic in a way that cannot be expressed using traditional methods. The technology and mental toolkits exist, however, that could allow us to capture such complexity in a model, to show us where a business’levers are, what drives its growth, what makes it tick. Such a model would unlock new ways of running a company and allow next-level strategic decision making.
As a Simulation and Modeling Engineer, you will be building this model. Your first few weeks will be spent absorbing context and understanding how we work. You will be asking lots of questions, reading documentation, and researching any new technologies you come across. You will start to collaborate across the company to discover the underlying mechanisms, feedback loops, and variables of the system that is balena, and then embody this insight in a simulation model fit for the twenty-first century.
Responsibilities
- Collaborate with our growth, finance, and leadership teams to identify the nodes and causal links that best describe balena’s growth and operations
- Work closely with our analytics engineers and internal tooling team to build and maintain a live bottom-up simulation of our business
- Help build interfaces, dashboards, and analytics tools for team-wide use and external reporting
- Analyze outputs and communicate insights based on your understanding of our broader business goals and priorities
- Research, evaluate and shape technology choices
- Challenge orthodoxy, and seek out new solutions to old problems
Requirements
- Strong technical background in system dynamics, process modeling, economic modeling, or other related fields
- Understanding of best practices and common tools for building simulations
- Comfortable with BI tools and independently retrieving data from databases and third-party services
- Interest in understanding and modeling a business
- Drive for execution —owning outcomes and pushing projects to completion
- Strong problem-solving abilities —you can split a complex problem into incremental pieces
- Excellent communication skills and fluency in English
Bonus points
- Proficiency in at least one high-level scripting language (especially if it’s Typescript)
- Experience creating UI, dashboards, and visualizations
- Background in leading teams and projects, and working across functions to build robust products
- Experience with IoT, embedded SW, or the balena platform as a user/contributor
- Contributions to OSS projects and community involvement
- Interest in organizational design
Make sure to let us know if any of these items apply to you! If possible, please also share a sample of your work or examples of projects (URL or attachment).