Talk to Our Team
Menu
The climate and energy tech hiring market

Senior talent for climate and energy tech

We place product, engineering, and go-to-market leaders across grid software, wildfire and geospatial AI, carbon markets, energy storage, and climate data platforms.

Retardant drop over a forest ridge
climate and energy tech

The market right now

Updated July 2026

$40.5B

Climate tech venture and growth investment in 2025, up 8% year over year

CTVC / Sightline Climate
$100M

Contracted revenue Pano AI reported crossing four years in, at its Series B

Pano AI, Jun 2025
$82M

Raised by Isometric and Sylvera in a single day for carbon markets

Sifted

Capital

Climate tech venture and growth investment reached $40.5B in 2025, up 8% year over year. Energy was the largest vertical at 36% of the total, growing 31% to $14.4B on the back of AI-driven power demand. CTVC / Sightline ClimateSightline Climate

US climate tech venture funding hit $29B in 2025, the third-highest year on record, while deal count fell 18%. The money is concentrating into fewer and larger rounds, which concentrates senior hiring into fewer and better-capitalized companies. Sightline ClimateCTVC / Sightline Climate

Wildfire technology has crossed from pilot to infrastructure. Pano AI raised a $44M Series B led by Giant Ventures and reports contracted revenue above $100M after four years, covering roughly 30 million acres. GlobeNewswire

Carbon markets software keeps raising through voluntary-market turbulence. Isometric and Sylvera raised $82M between them in a single day, and Sylvera ratings now surface in the Bloomberg Terminal. SiftedCarbon Herald

Consolidation

Consolidation here runs through partnership and strategic investment more than acquisition. TechnoSylva and Pano AI now sell a unified predictive and real-time wildfire stack to utilities and fire agencies, which turns two point products into one procurement conversation. PR Newswire

Insurers have moved from customer to investor, with Liberty Mutual and Tokio Marine backing Pano AI’s Series B. When the carrier writing the liability is also on the cap table, the buying committee gets larger and the sales cycle gets longer. GlobeNewswire

Who is hiring

  • TechnoSylvaLa Jolla, CASeven to eight open roles including a Director of Product Management for incident management, a senior product manager, and customer success leadership. Remote RocketshipBuilt In
  • Pano AISan Francisco, CAScaling detection infrastructure and utility go-to-market after a $44M Series B, with total funding of $89M. GlobeNewswire
  • WatershedSan Francisco, New York, and LondonHiring across enterprise sales, customer success, product, and engineering, and one of the few companies in the sector posting US enterprise account executive bands publicly. Watershed careersBuilt In
  • ArcadiaWashington, DCHiring staff-level engineers on utility data APIs and pipelines, with more than $370M raised to date. Built InCrunchbase News
  • Camus EnergySan Francisco, CAAdded five cooperative and municipal utility customers after a Series A above $25M, on a team of roughly thirty people, so every senior hire is load-bearing. TracxnCamus Energy careers
  • AmperonHouston, TXHiring across a fully remote company that sells demand and price forecasts to utilities and traders. Amperon careers
Show all 13 companiesShow fewer
  • GridwareSan Francisco, CAHiring across AI, machine learning, data science, and field roles on grid sensing hardware and software. aijobs.netstartup.jobs
  • AiDashNamed a Field CTO to drive utility integrations, which is the classic signal that sales-engineering leadership has become the constraint. EIN Presswire
  • OverstoryNetherlands and United StatesHiring across the team on vegetation management AI for utilities. Overstory careers
  • TybaHiring engineering and revenue at once, with a founding power market analyst, a product marketing lead, and a staff software engineer open together. LinkedIn
  • WeaveGridSan Francisco, CAGrowing utility partnerships on EV-grid integration after raising $78M. Tracxn
  • SylveraLondon and New YorkExpanding institutional distribution after its Series B, which implies an enterprise go-to-market buildout behind it. Carbon Herald
  • FlexGenDurham, NCGrowing its team across the HybridOS battery-storage software platform. FlexGen careers

Why hiring here is different

These companies sell into utilities, grid operators, enterprises, insurers, and governments. The buying process is slower and more consensus-bound than software leaders coming from commercial markets expect, and the gap shows up first in the revenue org.

The working assumption for a climate startup selling to a utility is six months to a pilot and eighteen months to a contract. Enduring Planet

Utility sales carry long cycles, many decision makers, varying regulation, and a culture that is deliberately cautious about emerging technology. Salesforce Ventures

Founders consistently name lengthy procurement and third-party risk assessment as the blockers they underestimated, which is a pattern rather than a run of bad luck. The ImpactDeloitte

A revenue leader who has already carried a utility or public-sector motion knows RFP cadence, rate-case timing, pilot-to-enterprise conversion, and how to build consensus across a utility org chart. That experience compresses years, and it is the input most of these companies are short of.

Roles we place

Searches in this sector cluster into five families, and the titles below are the ones this market actually posts.

Go-to-market leadership

  • VP Sales and Head of Sales, Utilities
  • CRO, most often at Series B and beyond as revenue gets professionalized
  • VP and Head of Partnerships and Business Development for utility, insurer, and agency channels
  • Enterprise account executives and sales directors covering utilities

Marketing

  • VP Marketing
  • Product marketing leads who pair energy-domain credibility with enterprise demand generation

Product

  • VP Product
  • Director of Product Management, including incident and operations platforms
  • Product leaders for grid, storage, and risk platforms

Engineering and AI

  • VP Engineering and Head of Engineering for utility-grade reliability
  • Head of AI and machine learning, and Director of Data Science, for detection models, forecasting, and geospatial computer vision
  • Staff and principal engineers on utility data pipelines and APIs

Technical go-to-market

  • Field CTO
  • VP Solutions Engineering for utility integration
  • Head of Customer Success for multi-year utility deployments

Where this talent is built

Senior operators in this market are built inside the grid software and metering incumbents that carry the installed base, and inside industries that live under the same operating constraints: capital that moves at the pace of a rate case, a monopoly buyer paid for reliability rather than adoption, compliance audited before anything touches the grid, and physical assets that outlive every product roadmap.

Inside the sector

  • GE Vernova
  • Hitachi Energy
  • Schneider Electric
  • Itron
  • Landis+Gyr
  • Oracle Utilities
  • AspenTech OSI
  • EnergyHub

Adjacent industries

  • Critical event management and mass notificationEverbridge, Genasys, Juvare, Rave Mobile SafetyThese platforms run inside utility storm and shutoff operations, under the same always-on reliability burden and public scrutiny of a failed alert, a crossover observed in vendors already selling into utilities.
  • Water utilities and water infrastructure softwareXylem, Badger Meter, Mueller Water Products, Aquatic Informatics, 120WaterWater is the same regulated monopoly buyer under a different commission, rate-case capital included, a crossover observed in metering vendors that serve electric and water utilities from one platform.
  • Telecom network engineering and fiber buildoutIQGeo, VETRO FiberMap, Render Networks, Bentley Systems, TrimbleOutside plant that lasts decades, crews on poles shared with the grid, and subsidy-driven build cycles mirror grid operations, a crossover observed in network software vendors serving telecoms and utilities alike.
  • Insurance catastrophe modelingVerisk, Moody’s, Karen Clark & Company, CotalityThese teams model the same wildfire and storm perils and defend the model itself before state insurance regulators, a crossover inferred from that shared review discipline.
  • Weather intelligenceDTN, Tomorrow.io, Vaisala, Spire Global, MeteomaticsWeather vendors already sell forecasting and storm operations tooling into utility control rooms, so the domain, the buyer, and the reliability bar carry over, a crossover observed in public deployments.
  • Power markets and energy trading platformsYes Energy, PCI Energy Solutions, ION Commodities, TrayportPower markets run on nodal prices and regulator-written rules, and the analysts who trade them already read the grid this sector models, a crossover observed in the market’s own analyst hiring.
  • Industrial process automation and operational technologyEmerson, Honeywell Process Solutions, Yokogawa, AVEVA, Rockwell AutomationControl systems here run physical plants for decades under conservative operators and change-managed releases, the discipline grid software demands, a crossover observed in automation vendors that already control power generation.
  • Oilfield services and subsurface softwareSLB, Baker Hughes, Halliburton Landmark, Enverus, Wood MackenzieEnergy services leaders carry subsurface engineering, field operations at scale, and energy transition businesses of their own, a crossover observed in senior moves from oilfield services into utility-facing climate software.

Geography

  • Boston, MAA top-five global climate tech hub with the largest per-capita concentration of climate startups in the country, anchored by MIT and Harvard spinouts and by Greentown Labs. Boston.govBoston Globe
  • New York, NYCo-leads US climate tech with Boston and is the strongest pool for carbon markets and climate fintech leadership. Dealroom
  • Washington, DCThe policy-adjacent pool of federal energy regulator, Department of Energy, and utility-regulatory talent. Arcadia is headquartered here and its founding story runs through DC energy policy. AWS StartupsBuilt In
  • Austin and Houston, TXThe ERCOT market structure makes Texas the natural base for storage and trading software, and clean energy is a named strength of the state’s tech economy. Growth ListAruba Exec
  • San Francisco Bay Area, CAThe largest overall pool, with Pano AI, Gridware, Camus Energy, WeaveGrid, and Watershed all headquartered here. Dealroom

Compensation signals

Updated July 2026

  • VP SalesEstimate$232K to $414K total pay with a median around $306K. Growth-stage base of $180K to $220K with $300K to above $500K OTE at plan. GlassdoorEverstageQobra
  • CROSelf-reportedAround $239K average US base, with total compensation materially higher once variable and equity are counted. Built In
  • Enterprise account executive, climate softwareSelf-reportedMedian base lands around $135K against roughly $270K OTE, and top performers clear $600K. RepVue
  • VP EngineeringEstimateAround $300K median base, with total compensation higher once equity is counted. CTAIO salary guide
  • Head of AI and machine learningEstimateA premium over standard engineering bands. AI engineering salaries rose faster than any other startup function in 2025, and no climate-specific dataset exists to size the premium precisely. Carta

Climate-specific compensation data is thin, so general enterprise software benchmarks apply with a premium for genuine utility credibility. For context, startup new-hire salaries overall were up about 5.8% against three years prior as of mid-2025. Carta

Market headwinds

Updated July 2026

Policy volatility

Policy volatility is the live risk. Tailwinds for grid and storage persist, and the volatility around them pushes investors toward revenue quality, which concentrates capital and hiring into fewer companies. CTVC / Sightline Climate

A shrinking deal count

Deal count fell 18% in 2025 even as dollars rose. There are fewer companies hiring at the senior level than the headline funding number suggests, and the ones hiring are doing it more deliberately. CTVC / Sightline Climate

Longer senior searches

That concentration narrows the pool from both ends. Fewer companies are running senior searches, and the ones that are will only look at people who have already carried a utility or enterprise motion all the way to contract. Leaders without that record get screened out early, which is why these searches run longer than the funding headlines imply.

Searches we have run here

Every card is a real placement, anonymized to the role, the sector it serves, and the region it sat in.

See the full track record →

Bring us your senior search in climate and energy tech.

Talk to Our Team →