Span

Our Mission 

SPAN develops products that accelerate the home's rapid adoption of renewable energy. The flagship SPAN Smart Panel is the first true evolution of the traditional home electric panel, harnessing enhanced metering, monitoring, and control technology. 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 

SPAN’s R&D team seeks an experienced and driven Sr Staff Firmware Engineer to be instrumental in developing market-leading converters hardware through all stages of the product’s lifecycle. In this role, you will drive the efforts to research, design, and optimize our power system portfolio integrated with SPAN’s panel, grow SPAN’s IP, and collaborate with hardware, controls, and mechanical teams to implement technologies that electrify the home and delight our customers. Candidates should be comfortable and excited to grow a team of highly skilled power electronics, hardware design, EMC, and magnetics-focused electrical engineers to advance SPAN’s product portfolio.

In this role, you will:

• Be part of the R&D Firmware Engineering team developing Functional Safety Code for power converters.
• Own and support firmware architecture decisions and implementation in embedded systems in compliance with safety standards for hardware products.
• Lead functional safety activities during the entire product development life cycle, including concept, requirements gathering, design, risk analysis, verification/validation, and release, working with a broad set of design engineers, program managers, and test engineers.
• Work with Span’s top-notch systems, electrical, and firmware teams to design new systems to support functional safety along the entire stack — from microcontroller selection to algorithms to communications architecture.
• Mentor junior and entry-level firmware engineers.

About You

Required Qualifications

We are seeking an experienced electrical engineer who has:

• BS in Computer or Electrical Engineering with at least five or more years of experience developing firmware for power converters.
• Experience developing firmware for embedded systems for grid-tied power converters, energy storage converters, or any other renewable energy source converter (e.g., wind, fuel cell, etc).
• Experience in guiding/leading UL 1998, IEC 60730, or IEC 61508 certification processes for complying with safety standards such as UL 1741 or UL 9540.
• Experience implementing grid code requirements, such as UL1741SB, IEEE-1547 2018, and California Rule 21, into embedded systems.
• Experience in driving system-level requirements and breakdown into software requirements and keeping traceability throughout the development cycle.
• Experience in interacting with controls and hardware engineers to solve complex issues related to intermodulation distortion, signal processing for HV, HC signals, and protection of semiconductor devices.
• Experience programming Embedded Systems using C++ or Object Oriented C.
• Experience with Functional Safety Capable Microcontrollers or Digital Signal Processors (DSP) from TI, ST, and Microchip.

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone who has:

• MS in Computer or Electrical Engineering with at least five or more years of experience developing firmware for power converters.
• Worked on products deployed in the field for residential or commercial/utility-scale projects.
• Worked on a project that has passed UL certification processes.
• Hands-on experience in debugging digital and analog circuits
• Experience Building Automated testing infrastructure for HIL systems.
• Experience working in power lab environments and in all levels of the development cycle, from prototyping to full production.

The U.S. base salary range for this position is $190,000 - $225,000 plus benefits, equity and variable compensation for Sales-related roles. This range represents SPAN’s good faith estimate of competitively-priced salary for the role based on national, real-time industry data from companies of a similar growth stage. This range reflects minimum and maximum new hire salaries for the role in San Francisco county. Within the range, individual pay is determined by location and individual factors including relevant skills, experience and education or training. This range correlates to the relative level of the candidate we believe we need for the role and may require an adjustment for candidates of a different level. 

Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the location this role is based during the hiring process. 

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 the future 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 (i.e. Black History Day, International Women’s Day, Earth Day and Gay Pride & Juneteenth among others)
• 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.