Base Power Company

Hardware Technical Program Manager at Base Power Company (Austin, TX)

Base Power Company· Austin, TX·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Base Power Company at a glance

Base Power installs home batteries and sells below-market energy in Texas, earning its margin from the grid instead of your bill.

Base Power is a next-generation power company that installs whole-home backup batteries and sells fixed-rate, below-market electricity to homeowners, primarily in Texas. It coordinates its fleet of distributed batteries as a single grid asset, earning revenue from wholesale energy markets so it can keep customer rates low.

$1.3B raised · latest: Series C · $1B · October 2025 · backed by Addition, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Job description

About Base

Base is America’s next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization–electricity–by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

Base is starting its next major hardware program: a new class of large-scale infrastructure hardware, far bigger than anything we've built for a single home. It draws on what we already do well: power electronics, thermal design, high-volume manufacturing, and a supply chain we control end to end. We're hiring the Technical Program Manager who owns it from first prototype to volume production. You'll hear the full picture in your first conversation. This role is in person in Austin.

What You'll Do

  • Own the program. One schedule, one critical path, one person accountable for the date. Build the plan, run the reviews, and force the decisions that keep the plan honest.
  • Drive the hardware from prototype through validation and industrialization into volume production. Own build plans, part readiness, and design maturity down to the part number.
  • Run suppliers and contract manufacturers: tier 1-3 sourcing, vendor qualification, and tooling capacity. Hold internal and external teams to cost, quality, and schedule with hard metrics.
  • Own BOM cost and defend it.
  • Lead the ramp: line bring-up, throughput, and yield, with a clean handoff to the teams who install in the field.
  • Bring leadership bad news first, early, with recovery options ready.

What You'll Bring

  • 3+ years of hardware program management or hardware engineering.
  • You've personally carried a physical product from prototype to volume production, thousands of units or more, not a pilot run.
  • You're technical enough to arbitrate. You can read a schematic and a mechanical drawing, understand the trade-off, and push back with credibility instead of relaying status.
  • Direct ownership of manufacturing and supply chain outcomes: cost, tooling, quality, and capacity.
  • Working knowledge of test campaigns that validate performance and reliability. You build structure where none exists.
  • You'd rather be on the factory floor than in a status meeting.

Preferred Skills

  • Engineering degree (EE, ME, or industrial engineering).
  • New product introduction in high-volume consumer electronics, automotive, EV, or aerospace.
  • Power electronics, battery systems, or grid hardware.
  • Data center, server, or networking hardware: racks, power distribution, or cooling.
  • Standing up a new production line or supplier from zero.

About the Team

Our hardware team designs, validates, and ships the batteries, inverters, and grid interconnect devices inside every Base home. We keep the hard parts in-house, from power electronics and firmware integration to mechanical and thermal design, and take each product from first prototype to high-volume production. Homeowners across the country rely on Base for whole-home backup and lower electricity bills. Our network of home batteries also helps keep the grid stable as demand climbs from AI, electrification, and extreme weather. We build in-house and expand at a speed and cost incumbents can't match, and this team makes that possible.

Please note: Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

  • First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.
  • Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.
  • Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.
  • Everyone’s an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.
  • Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.
  • Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It’s not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.
  • Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.

Why work at Base Power Company

  • Culture: Described as "intense, fast-paced, and deeply mission-driven." The company demands high output, ownership, and a bias toward action. It's explicitly stated as "not for everyone, and that's by design." This is a high-ownership, low-ambiguity environment.
  • Work Model: On-site at Base HQ in Austin, Texas. Proximity to the product and team is central to how they move fast. "Do I need to be based in Texas? Yes."
  • Hiring Speed: Fast process — aim for 1st conversation to offer in ~2 weeks.
  • Interview Process: 3-4 hour on-site including technical assessments and behavioral/team conversations. Focus on "how [you] approach problems, communicate tradeoffs, and collaborate."
  • Non-traditional backgrounds: Explicitly welcome: "We care about what you've built and how you think, not the logos on your resume. Some of our best people came from non-traditional paths."
  • Engineering Culture: Heavy focus on hardware + software + field operations. Talent sources heavily from Tesla, Anduril, SpaceX — firms known for hardcore engineering and manufacturing excellence. Roles span hardware engineering, firmware, software, manufacturing, field installation/service, operations, growth, and design.
  • Team Composition: ~29% of employees are in technical roles; ~15% in operations; significant representation of trades workers (11).
  • Notable Perks: Opportunity to work on physical infrastructure deployed at scale; chance to contribute meaningfully to grid modernization and American energy resilience.

Application questions