Systems Integration 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 Role

We aim to establish the Span panel as the center of home energy and the backbone of the renewable distributed grid. To accomplish this, we will have to integrate with everything — or at least with every solar inverter, every storage battery, and every high-power smart appliance we can get our hands on.

Designing and sustaining this broad and high-quality portfolio of technical integrations is the core mission of our Systems team. Our team drives systems architecture, does systems integration, root-causes problems, and builds internal infrastructure to keep our energy platform running smoothly and reliably.

As our lead systems integration engineer, your responsibility will be to own the integration between the Span panel and our growing list of technology partners. You will become our in-house expert on all aspects of the devices with which we integrate (e.g. power electronics, firmware, communications) and how our panel coordinates with them. You’ll be involved through the entire integration process, from initial design to lab testing and finally to remote monitoring in the field.

Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of the inverters, energy storage systems, EV chargers, and appliances we’re integrating with: read their manuals cover to cover, install and operate them in the lab
• Work with the firmware and software teams to design integrations (write specs, draw state machines)
• Take point on lab testing: verify that your integration designs work; try to break things; characterize the integrated system (e.g. response time)
• Coordinate with engineering teams from other companies: write integration proposals, serve as technical point of contact
• Use fleet data to monitor device health in the field and solve problems
• Reproduce and root-cause issues from the field; work with the team to develop and test fixes

Note: We’re a startup, so while this list is broad, it’s still just a start; you’ll end up wearing many hats during your time at Span.

About You

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or related field
• 5+ years' professional hands-on experience with energy storage, inverter, EVSE, or similar hardware products (testing, firmware/hardware development, or systems integration)
• First-rate understanding of electromagnetism, power electronics, and electrical engineering fundamentals; comfort reading PCBA schematics
• Comfort using and reasoning about all manner of communications protocols (REST, CAN, Modbus, etc)
• Extensive experience using oscilloscopes and other electrical instrumentation (logic analyzer, power analyzer, etc)
• Comfort working with embedded systems — reading source code, reasoning about state machines, etc.
• Solid hands-on electrical skills (wiring, soldering, etc.)
• Comfort working with SQL and data visualization tools
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to understand and explain complex problems simply and effectively
• A hacker’s instinct for making things work

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience working with field data and doing remote troubleshooting/diagnostics
• Experience programming in Python, Javascript, other scripting languages
• Numerical programming experience (PANDAS, R, MATLAB)
• Experience writing firmware / low-level languages (C, Rust) and using FreeRTOS or similar embedded operating systems

Life at SPAN

Why SPAN?

SPAN offers a unique opportunity at 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.

Working at SPAN, you can expect:

• Competitive compensation and early equity at a well-funded, fast-growing, venture-backed company (read more on why Amazon and others invested in SPAN here and here)
• A sunny 20,000 sq ft hardware lab + office space in SOMA, a stone’s throw from Caltrain and close to BART
• Flexible hours and vacation time - we simultaneously work hard and make space for the important stuff
• Additional SPAN holidays in celebration of causes we believe in (this year so far we provided days off in celebration of Black History in Feb, Women’s History in March, Earth Day in April and Gay Pride & Juneteenth in June) 
• Comprehensive benefits including a choice of medical plans; dental, vision, life and disability insurance
• Diversity - we are serious about this. 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.