Electronics Engineer

Our Mission  

SPAN develops products that accelerate the rapid adoption of renewable energy in the home. The flagship SPAN Smart Panel is the first true evolution for the traditional home electric panel, harnessing enhanced technology for metering, monitoring, and control. An expanded product suite of intelligent, integrated solutions radically lowers the cost and complexity of energy upgrades–including solar, batteries and EVs–empowering homeowners to be active, resilient and informed players in the energy market. 

The Span engineering team is made of experienced, passionate people with expertise in electronics, mechanical design, energy systems, and embedded software. We are seeking a passionate mechanical engineer to join the hardware development team of SPAN. As a electronics engineer, you will be responsible for building reliable, cost-effective energy management hardware for the Span panel that will ship to market.

In this role, you will:

• Own complex but cost effective PCB/assembly designs with precision analog, power, and digital content.

• Design or specify magnetic components and wire harness assemblies.

• Collaborate with internal and external teams on specification of mechanical interfaces, thermal interfaces, and overall product function.

• Choose technologies and rapidly/efficiently validate bench-level prototypes.

• Develop and validate highly robust repeatable power and analog circuit topologies.

• Design power, mixed signal, and digital circuits and circuit components

• Develop, simulate, and perform tests related to functional performance, regulatory compliance, and reliability, with limited resources.

• Interpret UL and IEC standards to extract construction and test requirements, and produce designs that meet these requirements without excessive iteration.

• Place and route PCB layouts to comply with creepage and clearance rules, high voltage safety concerns, high speed signal integrity requirements, low noise analog design best practices, EMC/EMI regulations, and thermal and mechanical design requirements.

• Produce completed design packages for PCBAs including well-curated BOM, clear schematic capture, annotation, and mechanical assembly/drill/conformal coat drawings.

• Document design requirements and work with external contractors for layout and other support activities when necessary.

• Work with contract manufacturers to incorporate DFM feedback into design process, creating high yield cost effective designs.

About You

Required Qualifications

We are seeking a seasoned electrical engineer who has:

• BS or MS in Electrical Engineering or Electrical Engineering/Computer Science.

• Hands-on approach whether it be building a prototype or performing testing.

• Experience owning designs, specifying system interfaces, and architecture with diverse teams under tight timelines.

• Proficiency in analog and mixed signal circuit design.

• Familiarity with power electronics.

• Familiarity with high voltage design (which in our context means up to 600V)

• Strong grasp on fundamentals covering circuit analysis, electromagnetics, as well as basic feedback and control theory.

• Experience validating design concepts with simple bench tests.

• Ability to think creatively and synthesize novel, cost-effective circuits to solve unique design problems.

• Experience working closely with contract manufacturers and suppliers.

• Broad knowledge of component types, including availability and supply chain concerns.

• Altium Designer (or equivalent Altium product) experience

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone who has:

• Demonstrated success working in a cross disciplinary, multi-cultural environment.

• Designed switch mode power supplies involving high (>60V) voltage, high current, high power, or high efficiency

• Designed magnetic devices such as transformers or inductors.

• Designed electromechanical devices such as solenoid actuators or relays.

• Knowledge of national and international safety and regulatory requirements such as UL, National Electric Code(NEC), FCC, IEC, and ISO.

• Design experience with products that connect to the electrical grid.

• Experience meeting IEC 61000-4-x requirements in design, especially ESD, surge, and EFT.

• Designed high voltage isolated power and data interfaces.

• Experience with development of performance validation, environmental, and reliability tests.

• Knowledge of design for test requirements in support of both flying probe or ICT, and functional tests.

• Designed functional tests for PCBAs at manufacturing end of line.

• Deployed or supported functional test in a large scale manufacturing environment.

• Analyzed field failures, and responded with design or manufacturing process changes.

• Supported both prototype and high volume production.

• 1-2 years experience developing products from initial concepts to mass production.

Life at SPAN

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. 

Headquartered in San Francisco’s vibrant SoMa neighborhood, we are an eclectic group of creative thinkers who value open communication, teamwork, and a ‘make it happen’ approach to addressing complex challenges. 

Our CEO, Arch Rao⁠—former head of the Tesla Powerwall team⁠—fosters an energetic and collaborative environment, with a strong emphasis on maintaining work-life-balance across the organization.

We’re hiring talented individuals who are driven by success and are passionate about shaping the future of renewable energy. If that sounds like you, we’d love for you to consider joining the rapidly growing team at SPAN.

The Perks:

⚡ Competitive compensation + equity grants at a well-funded, venture-backed company

⚡ Comprehensive benefits (including medical; dental, vision, life and disability insurance)

⚡ Comfortable, sunny office space located near BART and Caltrain public transit

⚡ Strong focus on teambuilding and company culture (events, meet-ups, clubs)

⚡ Flexible hours and unlimited PTO

Our Mission & Values:

At SPAN, we believe that powering your home with clean energy should be a simple and delightful experience that is at its essence human-centered and technology-forward.

Our core values include:

• Making home energy more accessible, intuitive, and convenient.
• Enabling homes and vehicles to be powered by the sun.
• Building resilient homes with reliable power.
• All-electric everything.
• A more flexible & distributed grid.

Interested in joining our team? Submit an application today and we’ll be in touch with next steps!