Staff Analytics Engineer - Energy & Building Systems

About the role

R-Zero is hiring a Staff Analytics Engineer to be the engineering judgment behind our building analytics: the findings we surface, the rules that generate them, the savings we claim, and the decision to move from insight to control. R-Zero's Physical AI platform combines occupancy sensing with BMS data to cut HVAC energy in commercial buildings, and every finding we put in front of a customer has to hold up to an engineer's scrutiny.

You will decide whether a finding is real, whether a savings number is defensible, and whether a control action is safe to turn on. You'll also make that review process scale as our rule library and fleet grow.

This is a startup role. Much of what you'll work on has no established playbook yet. You'll help define the M&V methods, review practices, and rule standards the Solutions team runs on.

The ideal candidate is a mechanical, controls, or energy engineer who lives in trend data. You can open a building's point list and drawings, pull a week of trends, and tell us within a day whether a finding is right, how confident you are, and what you'd need to be sure. You know the BACnet priority array well enough to know what happens when our write meets an operator override.

What you'll do

• Make every finding defensible: Decide whether each finding is real, and own the quality of the rules that produce it.
• Grow the rule library where it matters: Turn open-ended charters, such as central plant coverage, into validated rules, prioritized by impact.
• Discovery: Find savings beyond the rule library: investigate each building like an energy auditor, vet leads against data quality and real-world constraints (e.g., lease terms), and turn validated findings into portfolio rules.
• Qualify and scope new buildings: decide fit, and which equipment and points to trend, ranked by savings value.
• Stand behind our savings: Build M&V methods that hold up for each building and measure, including where standard IPMVP options don't fit.
• Gate and implement control: Decide when insight is ready to become control, then implement it safely through the BACnet priority array.
• Be the engineering voice with customers: Lead findings reviews with customer engineering and facilities teams, and feed what you learn back to Product and Engineering.

Required qualifications

These are skills we expect you to bring on day one.

• Evidence grading and system characterization: You judge how far to trust each building fact by its source. The range runs from a reasoned assumption to a public dataset, a document, a single trend, several trends together, or on-site or customer confirmation. You can say what evidence would raise that rating. You extract system configuration from drawings, submittals, nameplate photos, and test-and-balance reports, resolve conflicts between them, and state plainly whether the result is good enough to act on.
• Finding validation: You can review a finding against trend and building data and make a defensible call. That includes telling a failed sensor or offline controller from a real equipment fault, confirming what a BACnet point is from how it behaves, and proving from trends which unit serves which zone.
• Hands-on data analysis: You pull and analyze time-series data directly through AI agents (such as Claude), analytics platforms, or code. You’re skeptical enough to catch when a query, result, or agent is wrong.
• Priority-array control: You can implement control through the BACnet priority array, including write priority, relinquish defaults, and operator override collisions, not only through BMS programming.
• Sequences of operations: You can write a sequence of operations or control strategy grounded in ASHRAE Guideline 36.
• Airside depth: You have working depth in AHUs, VAV, and terminal units, plus working knowledge of central plant and hydronic systems.
• M&V fundamentals: You apply IPMVP in real buildings and can map BACnet points to the variables an M&V calculation needs.
• Customer technical leadership: You have led technical reviews with customer engineering or facilities staff.
• Experience and education: 8+ years of hands-on experience in HVAC design, controls or BMS engineering, energy engineering, commissioning, or building analytics. A bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Building Science, Controls Engineering, Energy Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated practice.

Preferred qualifications

We weigh these heavily, but they won’t rule you out.

• Central plant depth: You go beyond working knowledge of chillers, boilers, towers, and hydronic distribution, enough to own plant rules and plant savings.
• Standards in the field: You have applied ASHRAE 62.1 and 90.1 in real buildings, not just cited them.

What you'll own within 30–90 days

After onboarding on R-Zero's platform, rules, and tooling, we expect you to own the following.

• Grading playbook: Write down the judgment calls and methods behind your grades, and update the playbook whenever our software grades something wrong.
• Rule review and improvement: Review rules and improvement proposals, judge them, and improve the rules.
• Actionable defect reports: Write up defects in current rules or features so engineering can act on them: reproducible, point-referenced, with root cause separated from symptoms.
• Multi-method savings estimates: Quantify savings several ways, including a rule of thumb when data blocks the preferred method, reviewed and signed off with our principal engineer.
• New M&V methodologies: Define new M&V methodologies when existing approaches don’t fit.
• Control readiness calls: Judge when findings are on solid enough ground that control is plausible and prudent.
• Ambiguous charters: Take an open instruction such as “add central plant rules,” pick what has the most impact, build it, and validate it.
• Scalable review: Make review scale through rule-level review, sampling, clustering, and AI-assisted grading, so review time grows with rules rather than findings. Spot-check the software grader against your own grades and track where you disagree.
• Findings reviews: Lead R-Zero findings reviews and engineering deep-dives with prospects and customers.

Nice-to-haves

• Background at an MEP or energy consultancy, a commissioning or retro-commissioning firm, a fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) or building analytics company, or an early-stage startup.
• Hands-on experience with BACnet integrations and Niagara/Tridium supervisors.
• Experience building or tuning FDD rules at fleet scale.
• Familiarity with Python, SQL, or similar tools for time-series analysis.
• Exposure to DCV, IAQ, or smart building product categories, and familiarity with Title 24.
• Industry credentials such as PE, CEM, CMVP, CCP, or CEA.

Travel

Up to 15% travel for customer technical reviews, site validation, and occasional deployment support. Travel may include overnight trips or physical site tasks such as walkdowns and mechanical room access.

Why R-Zero

• Join a purpose-driven team tackling one of the biggest challenges facing the built environment- energy and carbon reduction.
• Work with innovative technologies at the intersection of health, energy, and smart building automation.
• Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.
• A culture of collaboration, taking ownership, and innovation.

Compensation Information

The salary range for this position will vary based on candidate level, experience, and location. The base salary for this position contemplates a range of $155,000 - $185,000. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. Proof of eligibility to work in the United States and a background check is required upon employment.

Physical Requirements

Physical Requirements

Rarely

(0 – 12%)

Occasionally

(13 – 33%)

Frequently

(34 – 64%)

Regularly

(65 – 100%)

Seeing: Must be able to read reports & computer monitors.

      x

Hearing: Must be able to hear well enough to communicate with others. 

      x

Sitting: Must be able to sit for prolonged periods of time. 

      x

Standing: Must be able to stand for prolonged periods of time.

    x  

Reaching/Climbing/Stooping/Kneeling:

  x    

Grasping/Feeling: Must be able to write & use a keyboard, tablet or phone system.

      x

Lifting/Pulling/Pushing: Must be able to lift, push and pull at least 75 lbs.

  x    

Lifting Requirements

Rarely

(0 – 12%)

Occasionally

(13 – 33%)

Frequently

(34 – 64%)

Regularly

(65 – 100%)

0 – 25 lbs.

  x    

26 – 50 lbs.

  x    

51+ lbs.

x