We're looking for someone to help design and grow Ember's network. You'll find route opportunities, build the timetables that run them, and use data to make every part of the network work better. Your background matters less than your ability to think clearly, work in the real world as well as in code, and hold yourself to a high standard.
About Ember
We're building the future of public transport — convenient, affordable, connected and zero-emission. Our goal is to make it easier and more enjoyable to get from A to B with Ember than it is with your own car.
Ember is a tech company, not a traditional bus operator. We've built a platform that coordinates our entire operation – everything from monitoring vehicles and controlling chargers to selling tickets and calculating ETAs. This allows us to use electric buses more intensively than anyone else in the world, leading to a massive reduction in emissions. It also helps us provide a much better passenger experience, with innovative features like demand-responsive stops.
We’re still tiny, with a handful of routes and 98 buses. The challenge is to scale this 50x whilst staying lean, increasing efficiency and delivering an even better product experience. We’ve recently raised a Series A from some of Europe’s leading climate VCs and are looking for mission-driven individuals who want to get on board and help take us to the next level.
The role
This is a broad, hands-on role where you'll work across the full lifecycle of a route — from spotting an opportunity on a map to launching it, then making it better once it's running. We're a small team with a lot of ownership on offer. If something needs figuring out, you figure it out.
Finding new routes means going deep on Google Maps, researching existing transport alternatives, getting out into the real world to test ideas, and engaging with local communities to understand what they actually need. You'll need to know what's possible with our fleet of electric coaches and charging infrastructure, and to be comfortable trading off the most attractive-looking route design against the efficient use of those assets. The best route on paper isn't always the best route to run.
We don't build traditional clock-face timetables that ignore traffic patterns. Ours are probabilistic, accounting for how the use of each stop varies across days, weeks and seasons. You'll design them, take them through council consultation and registration with the Traffic Commissioner, and make sure the resulting service information ends up in the right places — everywhere from Google Maps to the paper timetables in bus shelters.
A great timetable is only the start. You'll work alongside our operations and charging teams to make sure we've hired and trained the right number of drivers, that there are decent rest facilities where they can take breaks, that we have enough vehicles to run the route, and that the charging will be there when it's needed. You won't do any of these things yourself — but you'll be central to figuring out what's needed and communicating that to other teams.
Launching a route is also only the start. Once a service is live, you'll use our data to assess how it's performing and work out how to make it better — sometimes a tweak to the timetable, sometimes a change to a stop, sometimes a deeper rethink. You'll do this in our own tooling: we don't rely on third-party network planning software, and you'll work closely with our engineers to make that tooling better with every route you run through it.
We're serious about AI as a tool. You'll have access to frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI and others with generous usage limits, and we expect you to use them to move faster on data work and analysis. Being AI-native isn't a substitute for being good — you're accountable for the routes you design and the timetables you launch.
What you might work on
You’ll work on a mixture of greenfield and brownfield projects. That could include:
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Designing and launching new intercity routes in new geographies — picking the corridor, understanding the existing alternatives, working out charging patterns, building the timetable and getting it registered with the Traffic Commissioner.
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Re-engineering the timetable on one of our busier routes so we can provide higher passenger utility without adding vehicles, using booking, occupancy and traffic data to find the slack.
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Working on a simulator that tests a proposed timetable against historical demand and traffic before we commit to running it — so we know how it'll perform before drivers and chargers are scheduled.
Diversity and equality
At Ember, we support diversity across our team and customers. We work to ensure every employee feels respected and able to give their best, whether temporary, part-time or full-time. We’re happy to offer flexible working patterns where they make sense, are compassionate when it comes to time off and we offer enhanced maternity and paternity leave.
Read more about our approach in our Equal Opportunities Policy.
What’s on offer
You'll receive a salary of £40,000–£50,000 per annum, depending on your experience and skills, plus share options. You'll be expected to work from our lovely office in central Edinburgh most days — we value in-person communication — but there's flexibility around the odd day from home.
How do I apply?
Send your CV and a short note on why this interests you. We like actions over words, so include a link to something you've built that showcases your skills.
Who we're looking for
You should have a desire to get involved early in Ember's growth, with a real opportunity to make your mark. How you work and think matters more to us than specific industry experience. The following should sound a lot like you:
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Data-driven. You're comfortable in spreadsheets, Python and SQL — or willing to learn whichever of those you don't already know. You can show an aptitude for digging into messy data and pulling out the useful signal.
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AI-native. You treat AI tools as an extension of your own data skills. You're comfortable using frontier models to work faster and more rigorously, and you experiment with new tools and techniques as they evolve.
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Detail-oriented and strategic. Our network is complex, with lots of moving parts that depend on each other. You can zoom in to the detail of a single stop or driver shift, then zoom out to see how a change ripples through the wider system.
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Interested in transport. You don't need to be a bus spotter, but the problems we're solving should genuinely interest you.
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Hands-on and self-directed. This isn't a desk job. You'll get out into the network — riding routes, walking stops, meeting council officers — and you're comfortable blending the strategic, the digital and the real world. You take initiative, manage your own projects and ask for help when you need it.
