Why candidates should join
Powernaut is a Ghent-based startup (founded Jan 2024 by CEO Florentijn Degroote and CTO Serge Morel) building orchestration software / Virtual Power Plant technology that helps energy suppliers manage millions of decentralized devices — solar panels, batteries, EVs, heat pumps — as one coordinated system rather than isolated assets. It runs on a Platform-as-a-Service model, where energy suppliers pay access fees to integrate and manage their customers' assets on the platform
About this role
Product Engineer
Ghent, Belgium (HQ-based) | Full-time



About the Client
Homes and businesses are adopting solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and electric vehicles — creating and sharing energy like never before. This shift is reducing Europe's reliance on fossil fuels and building the energy sovereignty our continent needs. It's exciting, but all that new, distributed power is straining our grids.



The client software connects these energy devices into a single source of truth — cutting electricity costs, keeping grids stable, and making clean energy work for everyone. Join us to speed up the energy transition and help build a brighter, cleaner, fossil-free world.



The Role
Own products end-to-end: decide what to build, then build it. You'll sit at the intersection of engineering and product — talking to customers, shaping what gets built, and shipping it yourself. You're measured on outcomes, not tickets closed.

We build AI-first. Writing code is no longer the hard part — the leverage is in judgment: knowing which problems are worth solving, designing the right thing, steering AI to build it well, and knowing when it's good enough to ship. If you're an engineer who's started thinking like a product person — and you enjoy it — this role is built for you.

It's a T-shaped role: your core is high-quality technical execution, but you also carry the product context and commercial awareness most engineers leave to someone else. You'll work directly with the founders and some of the sharpest people in the energy space, with high autonomy and a short path from idea to real users.



What You'll Own
End-to-end delivery — Take a problem from customer conversation through design, build, ship, and iterate. You own the outcome, not a handoff.
Your customers — You'll likely become the named technical "champion" for one or more customers, staying in regular contact and acting as their trusted point of contact.
What gets built — Diagnose real customer pain, weigh impact against effort, and cut scope ruthlessly so value ships fast. You feed recurring implementation pains back into the product as elegant, automated features.
How we work — Relentlessly hunt down manual, repetitive effort and find new ways to make AI do the heavy lifting, so the team ships more with less overhead.
Reliability — We run critical energy infrastructure. You'll build and maintain real-time systems where correctness, resilience, and uptime aren't optional.
Where This Can Go
The client is scaling fast, and this role is central to how we build. As the team grows, there are real paths forward — deepening into technical leadership and architecture, or broadening into product ownership and team leadership. We don't hand out titles on day one; they're earned with results. If your ambition is to shape both what we build and how we build it, this role is designed to grow with you.



Your Profile
Location — Europe-based, able to work from our Ghent HQ regularly, with excellent written and spoken English.
Experience — A strong software engineer (mid to senior) with a solid computer science background or equivalent, and a track record of shipping real products. What matters is the quality of what you've built and owned — not years on paper. Exceptionally ambitious early-career builders are welcome.
Product instinct — You don't just take requirements, you question them. You're energised by customer problems and comfortable championing your own work directly with customers.
A drive to work smarter — You're never satisfied with the status quo, and constantly look for ways to make AI and agentic tooling do the heavy lifting — with the judgment to know when to trust the output.
Technical depth, stack-agnostic — Deep understanding of software architecture, APIs, and data integration. Python, TypeScript, and SQL are our house stacks, but strong depth in any serious language transfers.
Outcome-driven — Comfortable being measured on impact rather than activity, with clear communication and documentation.
What's In It For You
Competitive salary with participation in our stock option plan
Autonomy to manage your own work and decide what to build
The chance to make a lasting, positive impact on the planet by accelerating the climate transition
A base at the Wintercircus in Ghent — a hub that fits the spirit of a fast-growing, innovative startup
A dynamic team of quick-thinking, fast-acting people who care about what they do


Role details
€50,000 – €80,000
Salary - Base compensation, paid annually
NO
Equity
Full-time
Contract type
Hybrid
Work policy
NO
Visa sponsorship available
Gent, Belgium
Location