Team Q&A: J.R. Enderle – Jr. Software Developer

J.R. Enderle has spent much of his professional life working as a communicator, which made him the perfect fit for our customer engagement team. As our Jr. Software Developer, Enderle works with our development team to improve how utilities and customers connect. Join us in formally welcoming J.R. to the Virtual Peaker team!

How did your previous life prepare you for Virtual Peaker?

For most of my career, I worked as a copy editor, in particular in online higher education working on course curricula. It was a different domain, but skills like communication, quickly making sense of complicated systems to be able to modify and improve them, and a strong focus on accessibility and equity transcends both. Both as a junior software developer at Virtual Peaker and in education, I quickly learned the importance of clear documentation and communication to be able to document and share knowledge so future users can benefit from that experience and save time in the future.

One constant focus from higher education I brought with me to Virtual Peaker was making success inevitable for students, an aim I now bring to helping utilities serve their customers. This includes creating systems and interfaces that leave nothing to chance, with intuitive, performant, and friendly designs that feel natural for users to operate and that future developers can easily understand and build on in the future.

Tell us about your role at Virtual Peaker.

I’m currently a software developer on the Customer Engagement team working on the Relay suite of software. As part of that role, I’ve gotten to work on most aspects of Virtual Peaker’s customer engagement efforts, including customer incentive processing, messaging, and the apps that homeowners use to engage with their devices and utilities.

I enjoy the cross-disciplinary nature of our teams: on one day we might work on the front-end interfaces customers will use and on another may be spent on the back end of the system working on the software that provides the data customers and users need to succeed. At Virtual Peaker I get to contribute to many aspects of distributed energy resources (DERs), from the technical challenges of working with devices to thinking about how to get and keep buy-in from users and homeowners on how to stay engaged with demand response events. But regardless of what I’m doing, one of the great things about working at Virtual Peaker has been the emphasis on the importance of our shared mission and the focus on personal growth and learning both individually and as a team.

How do you personally engage in sustainability efforts?

In my own life, I try to consume less, buy second-hand, and walk and bicycle as much as possible. It’s always been important to me to live in places where I can do that and to buy things that last and can be repaired, ideally at home, rather than thrown away after use. I’ve also been a vegetarian for all of my adult life and enjoy learning how to be a conscientious consumer and make food choices that are good for the Earth, as well as considering how I can tailor my investments toward businesses that share that same goal.

What can you tell us about yourself?

In my personal life, I enjoy reading science fiction, trying bourbon with my fiancé, drawing, and bicycling. Even after a day’s work of programming, I’m still excited to keep learning about programming and programming languages, often from the past and different from what I already know, or continuing my own coding projects that lately have gravitated toward helping me achieve a rudimentary understanding of orbital mechanics and spaceflight. After university, I got to spend a year teaching English in France, and still appreciate French culture and language.