Electrical Test Engineering Co-op

The Company

At Span, we are building products to drive the rapid adoption of renewable energy and enable a more modern, flexible grid. Span’s smart panel replaces the standard electrical panel to become the center for connected power in the home, providing intelligent load-balancing and revolutionary edge-of-grid controls through the Span mobile app.

The Role

The Span manufacturing team is made of experienced, passionate people with expertise in electronics, mechanisms, energy systems, new product introduction, and test automation. We are seeking a passionate electrical engineering student to join the manufacturing engineering team of SPAN. As an electrical engineering co-op, you will apply your knowledge of electronics to assist Span’s new product introduction, testing, and manufacturing efforts.

The engineering challenges we face at Span apply to various industries, with engineering challenges similar to climate tech, consumer electronics, and construction industries. Compared to other climate tech companies, Span offers the ability to work on a project that is out of the “science phase” and in the engineering execution phase, so you will be working to deliver from prototype to product. 

The co-op position has a duration of 6 months and can start in either the first or second half of 2024. Candidates must be enrolled in an accredited college or university, and have not graduated prior to end of the co-op term.

 In this role, you will:

• Work closely with hardware design engineers to develop electrical functional tests to help bring-up and debug prototype designs and systems.
• Perform Design for Test and feedback those results to hardware design engineers to ensure our products can meet functional test requirements.
• Create test specifications for circuit board assemblies, sub-system assemblies, and final assemblies.
• Architecture test systems such as selecting appropriate fixture vendor for fabrication, and design the appropriate electronics necessary to meet test requirements.
• Write the software necessary to control and automate the test equipment.
• Write the software necessary to perform manufacturing tests per test requirements.
• Integrate, checkout, and validate test equipment for transfer to manufacturing partners.
• Produce all necessary technical documentation such as wiring diagrams and assembly drawings for those test systems to be released into our PLM system.
• Have the opportunity to learn about and develop tests for printed circuit board assemblies with relay controls, power electronics & metering, mixed analog and digital design, sensors, and various communication protocols.

About You

Required Qualifications

We are seeking an electrical engineer who is:

• Working towards a graduate level degree in Electrical Engineering or related field.
• Fundamental knowledge of electrical engineering and circuit theories.
• Passionate about renewable energy and energy storage!
• Self-motivated, independent and have an eagerness to learn and work as a team, and a desire to thrive in a very fast paced environment!
• Ability to analyze problems and derive thoughtful solutions by working with your team members.
• Basic understanding and experience with oscilloscopes, programmable power supplies, and multimeters.
• Basic knowledge of Altium Designer.
• Basic coding with Python.

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone who has:

• Prior electrical engineering internship and/or co-op experience.
• Experience developing test specifications and test systems for solar or renewable energy applications.
• Hands-on fabrication and integration experience for test fixtures, test kits, harnesses and other types of test peripherals.
• Experience with developing graphical user interfaces, test equipment abstraction layers, test sequences, and test & manufacturing data analysis tools.

Life at Span

Span is a startup based in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. We are a small, diverse team of creative thinkers. We value open communication, teamwork, and a make-it-happen attitude - no job is too big or too small. We strive to make change by imagining what the future could be and building a product to complete that vision. We are looking to grow our team with talented people who are on the same mission to shape the future of energy.

Impacting the future as a small, agile team means putting in a lot of hard work and elbow grease so we work to make sure you are happy, healthy, and you look forward to coming to work. Working at Span, you can expect:

• Competitive compensation
• Sunny, airy office located close to BART and Caltrain
• Regular team lunches, brown bag learning opportunities and events
• Opportunity to influence our culture.

Span embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.