At Flexa, we are committed to diversity - of backgrounds and experiences. You don’t need 100% of the preferred qualifications to add incredible value to our team. If you’re passionate about what you could accomplish here, we’d love to hear from you.
Willi Richert, VP of Technology — flexa
Hi there!
I'm Willi, VP of Technology at flexa. I've spent the last 15 years building engineering teams around systems that have to make good decisions fast and at scale. Most recently at Lyft, where I led the mapping organization — 30+ engineers across five countries — and we moved more than 96% of rides off Google Maps onto our own mapping product. Before that I worked on machine learning and conversational AI at Microsoft Bing, and I did a PhD on learning in heterogeneous robot groups, which is a long way of saying that distributed decision-making has held my attention for a while.
What pulled me to flexa is that it's the same class of problem with something physical at the other end. We dispatch energy of the Enpal customer fleet in real time against energy markets. If our infrastructure is a few seconds late or a few percent off, customers lose money and the grid gets less flexibility than it could have had. That makes cloud engineering a first-order product concern here rather than a supporting function — which is why this role sits close to the decisions that actually matter.
How I work: I'd rather hand you the whole problem, context and constraints included, than a ticket. I care that engineers can see the consequences of what they build, and I'll be direct with feedback and expect the same back — the fastest way to lose a year is for everyone to stay polite about an architecture that isn't working.
You won't find everything already built. Some of it is greenfield, some of it needs replacing, and you'll have real influence over which is which. If that sounds like your kind of problem, I'd like to hear from you — and if you're not sure your profile is a perfect match, apply anyway and let's talk.
Looking forward to meeting you,
Willi
flexa is on a mission to build Europe's largest Virtual Power Plant (VPP) in the residential sector together with our partners at Enpal and Entrix.
Our mission is to build and operate a Virtual Power Plant that not only delivers significant energy cost savings but also supports the transition to a 100% renewable electricity future. By offering complete residential energy systems at competitive prices and strategically tapping into multiple revenue streams, we are well-positioned to provide substantial real-world savings to our customers. This approach enhances customer satisfaction as they experience the full benefits of an electrified, energy-generating home.
Through a deep integration into the installed hardware and a direct connection to the customer interfaces, flexa’s AI-based solution controls the energy assets (such as EV, heat pump, home storage, and others) of a decentralized energy community with an exceptional level of accuracy, speed, transparency, and thus customer satisfaction. With intelligent algorithms, flexa maximizes customers’ usable flexibility and its returns on energy markets while considering costs, such as grid fees and asset degradation.
We are rapidly growing our team and are hiring experienced tech professionals interested in revolutionizing the energy sector. We are looking forward to receiving your application!
