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 energy decisions. 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 has two core theses:
- To solve climate change efficiently and quickly, every building should have a built-in energy management system (EMS)* — i.e. a Linux computer with the ability to measure and control the flow of energy;
- Buildings with an EMS can be smarter and better to live in than today’s buildings.
As Span’s first research engineer to focus specifically on appliance monitoring, you will help us pursue the dream of #2. We’re working on making the EMS into an excellent consumer product. We believe that the data that an EMS has access to — i.e. instantaneous current for every circuit in the house — can give tremendously valuable insights into what’s happening in the house. We believe that a good EMS ought to be able to detect appliance failures before they happen; prevent electrical fires; help homeowners operate their houses more efficiently, and act as a guide to homeowners as they go through the journey of electrification.
You’ll put the rubber to the road for this project, working with Span’s data scientists and engineers to research the right algorithms, plan and execute experiments, and build characterization databases. You’ll build data acquisition rigs with Span’s top-caliber hardware engineers; acquire, install, instrument, and break a variety of appliances; and analyze data and plan experiments with our top-caliber data scientists. You’ll balance a program budget (modest to start) and have wide leeway to inform the direction of our research and corresponding feature development. Unlike grad school, you’ll be supported by technicians, engineers, and data scientists.
Finally, as concepts become fully baked, you’ll work with the systems integration, hardware, software, and data teams to implement your findings for our fleet of panels, taking the process full circle from experimentation to application. This might look like writing cloud or device side algorithms, speccing new monitoring tech for future products or running analysis on the back end to inform strategic business decisions.
* There are multiple reasons, as we’ll discuss in our upcoming inaugural engineering blog post. Primary in our minds are service-upgrade-avoidance for electrification; demand-side management; and distributed grid.
Responsibilities
- Serve as a subject-matter expert for how appliances work, their electrical signatures, and how they fail
- Read the academic literature to understand appliance failure modes and analytical techniques for identifying them
- Build physics models of appliances to generate simulated data sets and train models
- Work with Span hardware engineers to assemble and maintain data acquisition hardware rigs and data ingest systems for appliance current characterization
- Own the Span appliance lab, working with Span technicians to buy, install, and instrument appliances
- Introduce faults into appliances and characterize them using your data acquisition hardware
- Work with the data science team to analyze data, develop and test algorithms, and plan tests and experiments
- Serve as technical point of contact with appliance OEMs and other technical partners
- Help drive product/business strategy — determine which appliances/OEMs to work with, identify highest risks and clearest targets
Note: We’re a startup, and everyone here wears multiple hats; so you’ll inevitably end up working on other projects! This list is just a start.
About You
Below are some qualifications. You don’t have to meet all these qualifications to be a great fit. If you like to research and you have some ideas about how to approach the difficult and open-ended project described above, then let’s talk about it!
Preferred Qualifications
- Ph.D. (or most of one) in electrical engineering, experimental physics, thermal fluids, or other experiment-centric domains
- Solid theoretical foundations in 3+ of the following domains: electromagnetism, electronic engineering, thermodynamics, thermal fluids, power electronics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and computer engineering
- Project experience in 2+ of the following:
- Electrical skills (wiring, soldering, maybe PCBA design)
- Design, setup, and troubleshooting of data acquisition systems, instrumentation, and sensors
- Mechanical assembly, hand/power tools, plumbing/tubing, maybe CAD
- Experience working with data analysis and statistical methods, ideally with specific experience in time-series analysis, machine learning, and/or wavelets
- Good practical fluency with R, MATLAB, Julia, Python/PANDAS, or equivalent (e.g. JMP)
- Intuition for experimental design and the scientific method
- Ability to understand and explain complex problems simply and effectively
- A creative, nimble, scientific mind
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 a 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 include 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.