Engineering Lab Manager

Our Mission

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

As the engineering lab manager, you’ll oversee a number of different spaces, including a mechanical workshop, an electronics lab, a systems integration test lab, and a reliability test lab. We’ll look to you to make sure each of these spaces are organized, run smoothly, and grow to meet the needs of the team. You will work closely with our facilities managers for the co-located main office and our off-site R&D labs.

Responsibilities

Your responsibilities will include, but not be limited to:
- Managing the team of lab and fabrication techs, ensuring projects stay on track
- Managing prototype builds, including CNC machining and sheet metal fabrication
- Purchasing tools and parts; overseeing delivery and installation of equipment
- Coordinating with equipment vendors, riggers, electricians, plumbers, construction crews, etc.
- Implementing an inventory management system for tools and capital equipment
- Maintaining lab equipment, including scheduling maintenance, repair, and calibration
- Ensuring that the lab is a safe place to work
- Cat-herding the many engineers who use our lab*
* Note: this shouldn’t be too hard! — everyone at SPAN is quite friendly and collaborative.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience administering lab or shop spaces in a fast-paced R&D environment
• People management experience, particularly managing teams of technicians
• Strong, well-founded opinions about how to make lab/shop spaces usable — e.g. how to organize parts and tools
• Excellent organizational skills - you like to have a place for everything and everything in its place
• Comfort sourcing tools and parts, e.g. knowing when and how to buy used machine tools
• Experience establishing and maintaining internal processes (purchasing, logistics)
• Experience with project management; the organizational skills to track many different threads of work and drive them to completion
• Experience overseeing facilities upgrades, project-managing contractors, and communicating with officialdom (fire inspectors, OSHA, etc.)
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills
• A sense of ownership, accountability, and pride in your work
• Positive attitude, eagerness to learn, and adaptability ### Bonus Qualifications
• Experience working with electrical systems
• Familiarity with fabricators, prototype houses, machine shops etc. in the Bay Area
• Fabrication skills, mechanical (shop tools, woodworking) and/or electrical (wiring, soldering)
• Experience outsourcing work, hiring and managing contractors, supervising projects
• First aid / AED / CPR training ### 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.  Our CEO, Arch Rao⁠—former head of the Tesla Powerwall team⁠—fosters an energetic and collaborative environment, with a strong emphasis on maintaining work-life-balance across the organization. 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 team building and company culture (events, meet-ups, clubs) ⚡ Flexible hours and unlimited PTO Our Mission & Values: At SPAN, we believe that powering your home with clean energy should be a simple and delightful experience that is at its essence human-centered and technology-forward. Our core values include:
•  Making home energy more accessible, intuitive, and convenient.
• Enabling homes and vehicles to be powered by the sun.
• Building resilient homes with reliable power.
• All-electric everything.
• A more flexible & distributed grid. ### Note on COVID-19 SPAN takes the health of our employees very seriously. We have been adjusting our policies to match the needs of the situation. During the worst of the pandemic we operated a small 2-4 person skeleton crew in the office and everyone else worked from home. We are currently mostly in the office. Due to the nature of this role, we expect you will likely need to work primarily from the office, and would be part of the skeleton crew should we (shudder) have to operate that way again. Interested in joining our team? Submit an application today and we’ll be in touch with the next steps! ### Apply for this Job * Required