Head of R&D - Digital Energy

Are you the kind of researcher who is never fully satisfied by a paper — who wants the model, the algorithm and the market mechanism to end up inside a product that real households, communities and businesses actually use? Do you have the scientific depth, the leadership instinct and the "cazzimma" to build a research function from the ground up and make it deliver?Koala is looking for a Head of R&D to lead the scientific core of our platform. At Koala we are digitalizing, democratizing and decentralizing the energy market: we build the digital services that let prosumers, energy communities, professionals and public administrations enter a market that today is designed to keep them out.💡 Your ResponsibilitiesOwn Koala's R&D roadmap end to end: define the research agenda across our whole perimeter — energy sharing and collective self-consumption, digitalization of energy services, flexibility aggregation, decentralized energy trading, and participative ownership models for distributed assets.Lead the core research lines: modelling of resources; ML/DL forecasting; algorithmic aggregation, matching and price formation; market and mechanism design for decentralized exchange.Translate research into product: work side by side with product and engineering so that models, algorithms and market mechanisms are specified, validated, integrated and monitored in production — not left in a notebook. Define what "good" looks like in metrics, and hold the bar.Build and lead the team: recruit, mentor and manage researchers and quantitative profiles; set standards for experimental design, reproducibility, code quality and peer review; grow a small group that punches well above its size.Run our academic programme: coordinate the inter-university research programme we are building, structured in work packages assigned to different universities and research partners — scope, deliverables, milestones, interfaces between work packages, and the governance that keeps them aligned.Drive funded research: identify and pursue national, regional and European funding lines; write and structure proposals, lead consortia, and manage the technical and reporting obligations that come with them.Own the regulatory-scientific frontier: track how European rules on energy sharing, flexibility, aggregation and market access evolve, and turn regulatory change into research questions before it turns into a constraint.Represent Koala scientifically: publications, white papers, patents where they make sense, conferences, standardisation groups, pilot projects with system operators and institutional partners.Bring rigour to decisions: build the data foundations, benchmarks and simulation environments that let the company argue about designs with evidence instead of opinions.🎓 What We're Looking ForMSc or PhD in Electrical/Energy Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research, Economics or a related quantitative field. A PhD is welcome; a strong applied track record without one is equally welcome.5-8 years of experience in applied research, quantitative modelling or algorithm development — in industry, in a research centre, or across both — with a meaningful part of it in energy, electricity markets, or a comparably complex regulated domain.Demonstrable experience taking models from prototype to production: you have shipped something, seen it break, and fixed it.Programming skills in Python (NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, and the deep-learning framework of your choice); familiarity with optimization solvers (Gurobi, CPLEX or open-source equivalents) is a plus.Leadership experience: you have led researchers, engineers or a project team, and you can show what you built and who you grew.Experience with funded research — European, national or regional programmes — from proposal writing to consortium coordination and reporting. Prior collaboration with universities is a plus.The ability to explain hard technical concepts to non-technical people without making them wrong in the process — to a founder, a regulator, an investor or a customer.Comfort with ambiguity and a startup perimeter: you decide what not to research, as often as what to research.Excellent knowledge of English; Italian is a strong plus given our academic and institutional network."Cazzimma" — the determination, intellectual tenacity and drive to push a hard problem all the way to something that works!🌍 Why Koala?Koala is a forward-thinking, flexible company driven by a simple goal: to make energy accessible, transparent and shared. We value every team member for their unique strengths and potential. Here you will find a team that believes in collective growth, hard work, deep thinking and a clear focus on results.💥 What We OfferFull-time position with a competitive salary based on your experience and qualifications.Smart working options up to 100% remote, adaptable to your needs.A genuine mandate: this is a function to be built, not inherited. You define the research agenda, the team and the standards.A research programme with real institutional weight — an inter-university network, funded projects, and problems that are open in the literature and urgent in the market at the same time.Freedom to publish and to engage with the wider scientific community.A sector being rewritten right now, and work whose effect is visible: projects entering operation, bills going down, communities coming into existence.📍 LocationRemote working is welcome, but you'll always find a home base in Benevento, Avellino, Salerno or Torino (so far!).🚀 Ready to build the science behind decentralized energy?If you want to lead research that ends up in production rather than in a drawer — and to do it in a company that builds its own tools instead of buying them — Koala is waiting for you. Apply now and let's build an intelligent, democratic and decentralized energy future together.