The Mission
The electrical grid was built to carry electricity unidirectionally from central fossil fuel plants to end consumers. As we transition to a renewable future built from rooftop solar and community storage, the grid itself needs an overhaul. Span’s goal is to re-invent the grid from a clean slate to enable that transition, envisioning a grid made of distributed control systems and software as much as copper wires.
To accomplish this, we are upgrading the breaker panel — the humble box sitting at the center of every building’s electrical wiring — to monitor, control, and make decisions about energy. This converts buildings from passive consumers in a centralized fossil fuel grid to active participants in the emerging distributed energy market.
Span’s unique commitment to clean-slate “right architecture” and our zealotry for top-caliber customer experience position us as domain leaders in envisioning the distributed grid and have allowed us to achieve rapid growth and high visibility in the industry in the two years since we launched.
The Role
Span is ramping up our sales and deployment capabilities and our fleet of installed systems is scaling rapidly, presenting us with a growing influx of data from homes (i.e. residential power usage) and devices (i.e. telemetry, system analytics). This poses a major challenge to the team: keeping tabs on the performance of systems in the field, ensuring reliable high-quality customer experience, and identifying usage patterns and weaknesses in the system’s design all become more difficult as the number of sites we’re managing increases.
As Span’s first dedicated fleet analyst, you will be the guardian to our customer base, our “eyes in the sky”. You’ll be responsible for using data analysis to generate key insights across large groups of data, developing engineering-facing and sales-facing visualization infrastructure, and problem-solving at a high level across all aspects of Span, from engineering and installer support to identifying and troubleshooting live fleet data. You’ll generate insights, identify usage patterns, and perform debugging analysis from a large and very real dataset to extract value from our data for both our customers and our engineering teams.
Responsibilities
Act as primary maintainer for Span’s internal alerting system; participate in software development process to write alerts for new features, and refine existing alerts to improve signal/noise
Maintain key dashboards displaying fleet status, usage patterns, and surfacing issues in the field
Identify abnormalities in the field and support software engineers in debugging; monitor fleet health, take corrective action when necessary, and track open issues in the field
Parse, analyze, and visually present a wide range of data, from weather patterns and solar production to average EV charge time and most commonly tripped breakers
Collaborate broadly across the team, coming up with and answering questions in tandem with product managers, system architects, firmware developers, etc.
Monitor the rollout of new features, firmware releases, and products
Support other team members in working with data and developing visualizations
Be a self starter; be able to independently come up with projects and execute
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 YouRequired Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a closely related field
2+ years' professional experience doing data analysis on large data sets
Advanced proficiency with SQL
Extensive experience with BI / data visualization tools (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI, etc.)
Ability to work independently on complex projects
Good verbal and written communication skills
Bonus Qualifications
Experience with log traversal tools and query languages (e.g. Splunk/SPL)
Experience doing data analysis in Python/R
First-hand experience with fleet analytics
Experience with software debugging; proficiency in Python and/or C
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.
Working at Span, you can expect:
Competitive compensation at a well-funded, venture-backed company
Comprehensive benefits including a choice of medical plans; dental, vision, life and disability insurance
A sunny, airy office located close to BART and Caltrain public transit
Regular team lunches, brown bag learning opportunities, board games nights, and other opportunities to connect with teammates - in-person and now virtually
Equity grants at a quickly-growing startup
Flexible hours and vacation time - we simultaneously work hard and make space for the important stuff
To be a part of a team and culture that is hard-working, has a good sense of humor, values collaboration, and is just a little bit nerdy
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.