Lead Modeling Engineer, Power Systems

Our Mission  

At Span, we are building products to enable the rapid adoption of renewable energy. As more distributed energy resources like solar and storage come onto the grid, it’s increasingly important to be able to improve the technology that sits between the grid, the home, and those distributed energy resources. Span’s smart panel replaces the electrical panel to become the center for connected power in the home.  With Span, homeowners receive all the safety features of a standard panel with revolutionary insights and edge-of-grid controls through our mobile app.

The Role 

Span’s Power System’s group is seeking an experienced and driven modeling engineer to lead the development of a highly-flexible power systems simulation architecture. In this role, candidates will develop the physics-based foundational modeling infrastructure used by hardware, firmware, controls, and mechanical teams to evaluate technologies and partnerships that augment Span’s Panel and Drive products and accelerate electrifying homes. Candidates should be comfortable and excited to grow a team of highly skilled power electronics, thermal, and embedded systems modeling engineers capable of developing models that accurately predict the dynamic component and systems-level physics behavior for currently available and future home electrification technologies.

In this role, you will:

• Build an automated physics-based modeling infrastructure that will be used by hardware and modeling engineers to drive component tradeoff studies, product specifications, system integration, and system optimization analysis for the Span Panel, Span Drive, and partner home electrification hardware.
• Collaborate with hardware engineers to specify product experiments to inform and validate component and system modeling efforts; collaborate with engineers and scientists across teams to interpret test data.
• Aggregate load and source performance, degradation, and fault metrics across a number of technologies and manufacturers that can integrate with the Span Panel and Drive products, including electric vehicle batteries, home energy storage systems, solar arrays and inverters, and home appliances and thermal systems.
• Collaborate with the software backend team to evaluate compute technologies and services for improving the accuracy, security, and computational time of power systems simulations.
• Evaluate the scalability of hardware component and home electrical system models for use in grid-level power systems simulations and incorporate flavors of model granularity and accuracy where simulation speed is a priority.
• Collaborate with controls and firmware engineers to integrate the physics-based modeling infrastructure with a development environment that accurately emulates the code, processor architecture, analog-to-digital measurement sensors, and logic-level actuators for the Span Panel, Span Drive, and partner home electrification hardware.
• Support Span’s executive staff, product, and business team with techno-economic simulation and analysis to evaluate the viability of research and development projects, technology partnerships, and our product roadmap.
• Build and manage a resource plan and timeline for model development, including key hires that enrich Span’s modeling capabilities.

About You 

Required Qualifications

We are seeking a lead power systems modeling engineer who has:

• MS in Engineering, Physics, or similar technical field
• 5+ years of experience developing power electronics or power systems models in the automotive, energy, or aerospace industries.
• Expert in MathWorks/Simulink and/or Python as a scientific analysis and modeling platform.
• Experience building and maintaining physics-based electromechanical, electrochemical, and electrothermal models for electrical components used in power electronics converters, electric machines, energy storage systems, and solar panels.
• Familiar with Finite Element Analysis as well the tradeoffs between implicit and explicit solvers used in numerical analysis.
• Strong data aggregation, analysis, and visualization skills.
• Proficiency with basic measurement tools (e.g. power analyzers, scopes, and thermocouples).

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone who has:

• PhD in Electrical Engineering with a focus on Power Systems design and modeling techniques.
• 7+ years of experience modeling performance of energy storage or renewable energy systems in a product development setting.
• Knowledge of basic power electronics control theory.
• Knowledge of the physics-based model for arc faults.
• Experience with distribution grid modeling tools such as Cyme, Synergi, Milsoft and OpenDSS.
• Familiar with schematic capture and power converter circuit modeling/simulation tools.
• Familiar with simulating physics used in real-time processing for software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Experience modeling DSP and MCU peripherals used for the measurement and control of power electronics hardware.
• Demonstrated success working in a cross disciplinary, multi-cultural environment.

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 sqft 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.