As part of the UK Government Department for Business Energy Industrial Strategy (BEIS) FleX Exchange project, Piclo is developing Piclo Flex into a multi-market platform that facilitates “secondary trading” of flexibility requirements, focusing on National Grid ESO’s Capacity Market first. Secondary trading is the transfer of one company's contracted flexibility obligations to another, you can read more about secondary markets in our previous blog. The innovation project is currently trialling secondary trading on the platform in beta-mode with a small number of participants.
Kelsey
Q1. What is your role in developing Piclo into a multi-market platform?
My role is to make sure that the platform continues to evolve and grow, through participation in different innovation projects and managing the day to day work around these projects. I work with different teams internally throughout the life of a project to deliver new markets and features, as well as with a variety of external stakeholders (System Operators, Flex Providers, Government, Regulators, etc) to make sure that projects are closely aligned with industry needs and policy.
Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?
I love having a problem to solve and developing Piclo into a multi-market platform presents new challenges every day. It’s been really interesting to strategise and brainstorm ideas about new markets with the team and see them come to life. Building a product that will shape or change how an industry will work is a really cool thing!
Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?
Flexibility (pun intended). The industry is changing so quickly and projects and products need to keep up with that. Our innovation projects and really any work we do is based on the needs of our users and if those needs change, we need to be ready to adapt our ideas. As a project manager, I think the natural instinct is to have a detailed plan of attack to stick with but I’ve quickly learned at Piclo that those plans need to be flexible and more than likely will be changing on a regular basis.
Q4. Other than working on this project, what else does your role include?
In order to understand what new features we should be looking into, I also spend a lot of time in project meetings with clients and stakeholders as well as researching what is going on in the industry. Pre-Covid I also got to do a bit of travel! One of my projects (Project LEO) is based in Oxford and we frequently got to eat lunch in the “Harry Potter Great Hall”.
Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?
I worked in renewable energy district energy systems in Vancouver, Canada. Our main project was converting a legacy gas-powered steam plant (that provided energy to over 200 buildings) to renewable sources.
Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?
Having previously worked in the energy industry, I wanted to stay in that space but this role was a great opportunity to get introduced to the tech world as well. There is a lot of change going on in how our energy systems work and where our energy comes from but in such a big established industry, that change can often take a long time and requires a lot of regulatory and government oversight. Working on the tech side of the industry is a lot more fast-paced, with room for innovation as there are fewer legacy systems and regulations we are working against.
Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?
Yes, it is! I try to do as many little things in my day to day life as possible that hopefully are having a positive impact! Just to name a few are cycling, avoiding single-use plastics, buying as much as I can second-hand and working in an industry and for a company whose mission is to positively impact climate change.
Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?
For those that are in a standard slow-moving industry like energy and are looking for a change up to something more innovative and fast-paced, moving over to the tech side of the industry is a great move.
Mike
Q1. What is your role in developing Piclo into a multi-market platform?
As a product designer on the team, my job is to help us work towards solutions that balance the needs of users with the needs of Piclo. From qualitative user research interviews, through to workshop facilitation, the creation of production-ready UI artefacts in Figma and providing input and guidance on implementation details, I work end-to-end to ensure a high-quality outcome.
Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?
Ultimately, getting to work on ideas from start to finish that positively contribute towards the transition to Net Zero is immensely satisfying and worth all the hard work.
Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?
There are many, but probably the most underrated category of skills is that of the ‘soft skills’ needed to collaborate effectively in a cross-functional team. Being able to work smoothly with and talk the same language as colleagues with different specialisms and backgrounds is essential.
Q4. Other than working on this project, what else does your role include?
I work across two product teams, and also support what the business needs out of design from a marketing, brand and operations perspective. This also includes a focus on building out the team’s design ops capabilities, such as maintaining UI libraries in Figma and evolving our fledgling design system.
Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?
Just prior to joining Piclo, I’d taken a career break to figure out what I wanted to do next. Before that, I worked for six years in the Fintech space, working across brand, marketing and product functions for a startup in the consumer credit space. Prior to that, I worked as an agency-side graphic and web designer.
Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?
So, in my case, Piclo actually approached me via Hired.com. I wasn’t super keen right away, however after meeting the team and getting a better understanding of the mission, I was sold. As mentioned above, I’d taken a career break to figure out what I wanted to do next, and Piclo seemed to tick all the boxes, both from a career development as well as industry perspective.
Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?
Yes, absolutely. Like a lot of people, I’m looking for and figuring out ways to live a life that is more sustainable and in balance with the wider world, and I want the work I do on a daily basis to have a net-positive contribution to that cause.
Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?
It’s a great time to be an aspiring designer. We come in all different shapes and sizes, from Graphic Design, through to Service Design or Motion Design, there is a specialism out there to suit everyone. If you’re early on in your career, don’t be afraid to try out new things, change roles often and expose yourself to as many different ways of working as possible. If you’re more experienced and have been around the block a few times, never rest on your laurels, always be learning and be open to change.
Stu
Q1. What is your role in developing Piclo into a multi-market platform?
I work closely with other developers, designers and managers to ensure we build a product that delivers for its users while staying lean and efficient. This involves understanding and prioritising user needs, finding the simplest ways to solve problems, planning technical architecture, ensuring the team works well together, coding (mostly Python/Django and JavaScript/Vue), reviewing code, and proving it works and meets quality expectations. My role overlaps with a lot of other roles, so is highly collaborative, often using Trello and Miro to discuss, visualise ideas, and decide together.
Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?
I’ve loved creating something new and useful, avoiding over-engineering, learning as we go, and collaborating closely. Building upon the existing Piclo Flex platform gives us a great toolkit of components to use, so combined with careful prioritisation, we’ve been able to move very quickly and get a sense of achievement seeing people using the product very early on.
Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?
I think curiosity and adaptability are the most important skills for working in product development. No matter how much knowledge and experience you have, you still regularly encounter new problems: curiosity enables you to understand them, and adaptability enables you to learn how to solve them.
Q4. Other than working on this project, what else does your role include?
I’m also part of the Integrations team, whose remit is to help Piclo’s users optimise processes through API integrations with users’ systems and other partners. In this team, I support my teammates in their careers at Piclo, guide strategy and prioritisation for our workstream, participate in user interviews, and whatever else is necessary to make our work a success.
Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?
I was at a digital product agency for 9 years, where I worked on a range of different apps and campaigns for big brands, in roles across engineering, product management, coaching, and consultancy. Prior to that, I worked in electronic engineering for networking and communications systems.
Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?
I was keen to be involved in clean electricity generation, and was intrigued by the part flexibility can play. I love Piclo’s open and supportive ethos. I knew it was somewhere I would learn a lot and would be able to help others to develop too while doing important and interesting work.
Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?
It’s hugely important, which is why I wanted to work in clean electricity generation: I see it as the backbone supporting all other efforts. I could do more to contribute personally, but I drive a hybrid (but walk as often as possible!), compost veg waste in my tiny garden, and am looking into gas-free heating.
Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?
If you want to be a generalist or span multiple roles: don’t wait for someone to give you permission to explore outside your immediate responsibilities. A lot of organisations define roles to be very specific, so it can take some initiative to get exposure to new areas. Ask different people questions, read a lot, and offer to help out with things you find interesting!
Alice
Q1. What is your role in developing Piclo into a multi-market platform?
My role across Piclo is often non-typical. As a founder, one of my key responsibilities is to keep the project and product on the right track according to the strategy of the business. I’ve been lightly involved in the multi-market platform from the beginning, working with Kelsey and James in the early days to identify the opportunities for us in the market. Then later when we hired Mike to join, giving him the support to work on the more detailed design, consciously considering how the new product markets we’re testing will be integrated into the platform when we commercially launch.
Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?
I enjoy working with a team who all have different skills to pull together on a project like this. When a team is working well, they can meet the challenges that are inevitable to face and come out with learnings from failure and value from success.
Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?
To do my role you need to be good at observing and finding patterns (a kind of analytics that isn’t directly numbers based). Empathy is also a requirement as you need to easily consider the implications of a project both across your team, but also the potential customers.
Q4. Other than working on this project, what else does your role include?
When not working on new projects like this, I'm responsible in general for the product direction i.e. what’s the medium and long term roadmap for the Piclo Flex marketplace. I’m also responsible for product delivery and having happy customers. I spend a lot of time learning from our customers (currently the network operators) to understand their needs better and bring that information into the commercial team when talking to potential new customers. There’s also the team support work and hiring that goes on, as well as governance responsibilities that comes with being on the board.
Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?
I was working for a digital agency as a UX designer
Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?
My friend Andy (the CTO) approached me with James (our CEO) and we talked about the early ideas of the business. I saw an opportunity to bring my design thinking skills into a vision-driven business that I thought had a decent chance of making a significant impact in the industry.
Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?
As 1 of the 3 founders, this is obviously my personal driving passion. Other than restoring natural habitats I don’t think there’s anything more important than driving our energy industry towards Net Zero (and hopefully beyond that).
Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?
A design degree is a fantastic way to start a variety of careers. It gives one the skills to apply a design process to any problem. If someone wanted to also be a founder of a startup, my advice would be to choose an idea that drives you and find a friend or two (who have skills you don’t) to work on it with. It’s a really difficult job, you’ll need to feel like there’s a real value for you to push through those hard times, and having co-founders you can rely on is important.