About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.

• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.

• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, and Truth. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

We are looking for a driven Ontology Engineer to own the internal ontology that powers Prism. You sit at the intersection of HVAC/EPMS domain expertise and software — you understand how chillers, cooling towers, CRAHs, pumps, and electrical power monitoring systems actually behave, and you can encode that understanding into a structured, machine-usable model.

You are bold and creative, with deep empathy for customers whose systems are messy, inconsistent, and rarely documented the same way twice. You will design, build, and expand significant parts of the ontology and the tooling around it, and you'll have the opportunity to make an immediate impact on how quickly and reliably we can onboard new customer systems onto our product.

You are curious and like to understand technologies and their tradeoffs in depth. You already have accumulated insight from hands-on work with building systems and their control, and you are committed to rolling up your sleeves and getting work done. You like partnering with engineers, solutions teams, and domain experts — learning from them, and letting them benefit from your expertise.

**We are seeking teammates who are based in one of the following locations: USA or Canada (Eastern timezone preferred)

Responsibilities

You will own, maintain, and expand the ontology that defines the HVAC and EPMS components, tags, and relationships used across Prism. This is the shared vocabulary that lets our AI reason about a customer's physical plant — every component type, every measurable tag, and how they connect. The ontology is upstream of how we map real customer installations onto our product, so its quality directly determines how fast and how correctly we can onboard and control new systems.

You will collaborate closely with Solutions Engineers, AI Core, Product, and domain experts to make sure the model reflects both physical reality and how our AI needs to consume it.

In particular, you will:

• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of the Prism ontology — define, extend, refactor, version, and deprecate HVAC/EPMS component types, tags, and the relationships between them.

• Model new equipment classes and cooling/power topologies as we enter new customer segments, translating messy real-world system diagrams into a clean, consistent, extensible structure.

• Design and maintain the tooling, schemas, and pipelines that let engineers and solutions teams author, validate, and query the ontology — full-stack ownership of both the model and the software around it.

• Build validation and consistency checks that catch modeling errors, ambiguous tags, and broken relationships before they reach production.

• Partner with the AI Core team on the configs and Domain Specific Language (DSL) that map customer systems onto the ontology, ensuring the model is expressible and unambiguous.

• Establish and document standards and conventions for naming, tagging, and relationships so the ontology stays coherent as it grows and as more people contribute to it.

• Act as the internal source of truth and reviewer for ontology changes, guiding engineers and solutions teams toward correct, reusable modeling patterns.

• Collaborate in cross-functional initiatives with engineers, product managers, and domain experts across teams.

Key Qualifications

• Strong domain knowledge of HVAC and/or EPMS systems — you understand how the equipment works, how it's instrumented, and how it's controlled.

• Demonstrated ability to model a complex domain into a structured, consistent, extensible form (ontology, taxonomy, schema, data model, or equivalent).

• Proven ability to independently own and deliver complex projects with high quality and reliability.

• Solid software engineering fundamentals — you can build and maintain the tooling and pipelines around the model, not just define it. Comfortable with data modeling (relational and non-relational) and writing production-quality code.

• Good working knowledge of Python.

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, in an all-remote setting.

• Familiarity with semantic modeling or building-data standards such as Brick Schema, Haystack, or RDF/OWL ontologies.

• Strong attention to consistency, naming, and data integrity.

• Good educational background in one or more relevant disciplines such as Mechanical Engineering, HVAC/Controls, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience.

• Shares our company values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, Truth

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Hands-on experience with building automation, BMS/BAS, or industrial control systems (e.g., BACnet, Modbus, point/tag naming standards).

• Experience designing a Domain Specific Language or configuration system for mapping external systems onto an internal model.

• Experience with datacenter cooling and/or electrical power monitoring at scale.

• Experience with cloud services and event-driven data pipelines.

• Track record of successful collaboration with domain experts to turn tacit knowledge into shared tooling.

Relevant Technologies from our Stack

• Python, Go

• Postgres, MongoDB, Parquet, etc.

• REST & gRPC micro-services

• Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & Kapitan

• GCP — GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, etc.

• Grafana Cloud, Prometheus

• Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.

• You will spend time across Engineering, Solutions, and Data Science, learning how teams operate and how the ontology is consumed downstream.

• You will read parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with our documentation culture.

• You will set up your development environment and work through an onboarding exercise that walks you through the ontology and its tooling.

• You will learn how a real customer install gets mapped onto Prism today, end to end.

In your first 60 days…

• You will have a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how the ontology fits into the product.

• You will have built relationships with the engineers, solutions teams, and domain experts you'll work with most.

• You will complete the onboarding exercise and ship your first meaningful ontology change or tooling improvement.

In your first 90 days…

• You will be fully integrated with the team and cross-functional partners.

• You will independently own a new component class or subsystem modeling effort from proposal through production.

• You will have identified at least one gap or inconsistency in the current ontology or its tooling and driven a concrete improvement.

• You will begin setting standards and sharing knowledge on modeling patterns across the company.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

1. Meeting with Operations (30 minutes) — Meet you, learn about your background, discuss what you're looking for, and cover formalities around your application.

2. Domain & Modeling Interview (75 minutes) — A working session on HVAC/EPMS systems and how you'd model them. Expect to walk through a real-world system and design its component/tag/relationship structure.

3. Culture fit interview with Phaidra's co-founders (30 minutes) — Alignment with Phaidra's values and mutual cultural fit.

We use Kula as our hiring platform. During your interview, Kula's AI Notetaker will record a transcript of the meeting to allow the interviewer to focus on the interview, not the note taking.

Base Salary

US Residents:

• Tier 1 (Largest highest-cost metros): 134,442 USD - 175,615 USD

• Tier 2 (Other major metros): 127,720 USD - 175,615 USD

• Tier 3 (Mid-sized metro areas): 120,998 USD - 166,372 USD

• Tier 4 (All other locations): 114,276 USD - 157,130 USD

Canada Residents 

• Tier 1 (Vancouver): 136,123 CAD - 187,169 CAD

• Tier 2 (Toronto): 127,048 - 174,691 CAD

• Tier 3 (Montreal): 108,898 CAD - 149,735 CAD

• Tier 4 (Smaller cities / rural areas):  99,823 CAD - 137,257 CAD

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity. Final salary will be determined based on several factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, expertise, education and location. In some cases, final compensation may fall outside the posted range. Salary ranges are regularly reviewed and may be adjusted in response to market trends.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced, team-oriented environment where your work directly shapes the company’s direction.

• We are a 100% remote company. 

• Competitive compensation & meaningful equity.

• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.

• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).

• Unlimited paid time off, with a required minimum of 20 days per year.

• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).

• Flexible stipends to support your workspace, well-being, and continued professional development.

• Company MacBook.

Please note: Not all of Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We take a thoughtful and intentional approach to remote collaboration. Inspired by pioneers like GitLab, we embrace proven best practices to foster an exceptional remote work environment. Our culture is documentation-first, and we prioritize asynchronous communication to support focus and flexibility across time zones. While we value independence, we stay closely connected through tools like Slack and video conferencing. Weekly all-hands meetings help us align and build strong relationships, and we regularly host virtual team-building activities and social events to maintain a sense of camaraderie.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

To be considered for any position at Phaidra, you must submit an online application. This role will remain open until it is filled.

Phaidra only hires individuals who are legally authorized to work in the specified location(s) above.

We do not provide employment sponsorship. Candidates requiring visa sponsorship, either now or in the future, are not eligible for hire.

Candidates who advance beyond the initial screening stage will be required to sign a Non-

Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to continue through the interview process.

All employment offers are contingent upon successful completion of employment authorization verification and applicable background checks, in accordance with local laws and company policies.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.