The Role

Span is working on a next-generation product platform with substantially new capabilities and functionality beyond our present-day electrical panel and EV charger. As part of developing this “Generation 3” product suite we are looking to take on experienced, industry-leading architects to help establish a foundation of consistent, powerful technical concepts and design patterns behind our upcoming systems.

Systems architecture is a combined exercise of technical, interpersonal, and abstract reasoning skills. You’ll work with our Product and Revenue teams to define new product concepts; work with R&D and Engineering to do initial technical validation; and generate the high-level technical concept and system requirements for Engineering to plan and execute against. You’ll write the slide decks, diagrams, spreadsheet models, and requirements that serve as the basis on which the rest of the program executes.

This will be a highly interpersonal as well as technical role; a successful candidate will combine strong interpersonal skills and a love of discussion and collaboration with deep technical experience and design creativity.

Ideally, candidates will bring a specialization in one of our major topics for 2023:

• Application-layer functionality and integration (energy management, integration with DERs / IoT)

• Power systems (power conversion topologies, hardware optimization)

• Functional safety (design for UL 1998 / IEC 61508)

• Communications and compute (microcontroller architecture, ML acceleration, protocol design)

That said, generalists and those with specializations in other areas are more than welcome to apply.

Responsibilities

• Work cross-functionally with Product, Revenue, R&D, and Engineering teams to define new products

• Own technical assessment (calculations, modeling, data analysis) for new product concepts, working with collaborators in Modeling, Data Science, Product, Engineering, etc. as appropriate

• Build consensus around key design decisions, functions, and performance metrics

• Present architectural designs, requirements, and decisions for executive review

• Stay involved with designs through to completion, ensuring that the design adapts to meet reality, that core patterns are executed cleanly, and that performance targets are evaluated and met

About You

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years’ professional and/or academic experience in at least one of embedded firmware development, power systems, mechanical/electrical engineering, software engineering, or data science

• Strong understanding of electromagnetism, power electronics, and electrical engineering fundamentals

• Strong understanding of firmware and software: design principles, tools and patterns (i.e. understand what IPC is), runtime complexity

• Experience building and shipping complex software/hardware products, sufficient to be able to make well-founded time/effort/risk estimates about work in a variety of domains

• Ability to reason about the entire product stack, from high-level system function and customer experience down to the physics and properties of sensors

• Good people skills; ability to explain complex problems simply and effectively; enjoys working with collaborators from different disciplines

• Modeling skills: fast with a spreadsheets, comfortable working creatively in MATLAB / R / Python (building models, analyzing data)

• Comfort reasoning in terms of engineering design spaces, not just designs; ability to identify and explain engineering tradeoffs rigorously and clearly

Bonus Qualifications

• Extensive experience with power electronics design and controls

• Extensive experience with functional safety standards (UL 1998, IEC 61508, IEC 60730, or ISO 26262)

• Experience with distributed energy systems integration (inverters, batteries, MIDs, Sunspec)

• Professional experience across more than one area of embedded firmware development, electrical engineering, software engineering, or data science

• Experience with PCBA design (especially Altium)
  
  

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. 

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

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