Powernaut careers: remote jobs, culture and where they hire

Powernaut builds an Open Virtual Power Plant platform that connects distributed energy resources, batteries, solar panels, EV chargers and smart assets like HVAC, into a single workspace for energy retailers, independent power producers and asset managers. The platform forecasts and optimizes the pooled portfolio, then handles trading and settlement across day-ahead, intraday, imbalance, congestion and ancillary energy markets. Customers include Luminus, Romande Energie, DSG, Bolt and Trevion, and a published case study shows one customer managing 350 MW of solar and batteries across four markets from a single dashboard.

Founded in January 2024 in Ghent, Belgium by longtime friends Florentijn Degroote (CEO) and Serge Morel (CTO), Powernaut raised a 2.4 million euro pre-seed round in December 2024 led by Berlin's Revent, with Seedcamp, Pitchdrive and Syndicate One participating. By the time of the raise its software was already coordinating more than 200MW of decentralized energy assets, equivalent to roughly 80 wind turbines or power for 40,000 homes. The team is around 16-17 people.

The pitch is a defined climate mission with a number attached: co-founder Serge Morel has said the decentralized system "has the potential to save consumers and businesses across Europe more than 300 billion euros annually, while cutting millions of tons of CO2 emissions each year." CEO Florentijn Degroote frames the engineering problem the same way: "To effectively add more renewables and keep costs low for everyone, we need to coordinate these smart connected devices effectively."

Pay is published upfront rather than negotiated blind: the Software Engineer and Product Engineer roles list "80-120k euros fully loaded" plus stock options, and the Founding Account Executive role adds uncapped commission with on-target earnings of 140-180k euros plus stock options.

This is not a pre-revenue prototype. Utilities and IPPs including Luminus, Romande Energie and Bolt already run production volume through the platform, so early hires are shipping into systems already balancing real megawatts rather than building a demo.

Powernaut keeps a light public footprint on culture, no handbook or blog series about internal values. The clearest personality signal is on the careers page itself: alongside its listed roles sits a half-joking "Spontaneous Application" posting with the location field set to "A planet or space capsule."

Applications go through the careers page at powernaut.io/careers. Open roles found in this research include Software Engineer, Product Engineer and Founding Account Executive, each listed as based in Ghent or remote from elsewhere in the EU, plus Marketing and Software Engineering internships based in Ghent only. Powernaut does not publish its interview stages, take-home tasks or typical timeline.