Service Engineering Manager

Want to save the world from climate change? And to ride in with a superhero cape alongside your team to solve tricky customer issues? If you love the adventure of working for a fast-paced startup and enjoy having your hands in a bit of everything, look no further. SPAN is hiring a Service Engineering Manager.

Sitting within SPAN’s Operations group and reporting to the Director of Support & Services, the Service Engineering Manager will lead our Service Engineering team and efforts. The Service Engineering team has two charters. One is to be the Tier 3 escalation point for our Tier 1 and 2 customer support team for resolving technically complex product issues in the field. The second is to manage our field service dispatches by coordinating with installers and homeowners. In this cross-functional role, you’ll work with many groups from customer support, engineering, and accounting to technical services, applications engineering, and supply chain/manufacturing/quality.

Your objective is to ensure that our Service Engineering team delivers excellent service to our installer and homeowner customers and is a supportive partner to customer support and engineering all while driving technically challenging issues to resolution, with an eye toward our field service costs and brand reputation. As such, we’re looking for someone with strong management skills, deep customer empathy, and extensive technical experience in troubleshooting both software and hardware.

Responsibilities

Team management

• Support, coach, and manage the Service Engineering team in delivering excellent service

• Ensure appropriate coverage and capacity for Service Engineering tickets

• Identify and fill process and policy gaps by defining and documenting new SOPs

• Collaborate with our Customer Support Manager to expand and unify Service Engineering’s use of Zendesk with Customer Support’s usage of the tool

• Set and own the Service Engineering team’s goals

• Coordinate with accounting to reconcile Service Engineering expenses and track them against the Service Engineering budget

• Provide input into the refinement of the scope and charter of the Service Engineering team

• Identify areas for efficiency in knowledge transfer and training

Troubleshooting and customer service

• Provide advice to the team on handling challenging troubleshooting issues

• Handle escalated customer situations via phone and email (homeowner or installer)

• Build out the team’s skill set to reduce escalations to engineering

• Provide input into the development of our internal tools that allow us to remotely troubleshoot products in the field via SSH, command line interface, log file analysis, etc.)

• Help advance a product offering to empower our partners to conduct some remote troubleshooting of products in the field

• Oversee the build out of out our library of troubleshooting documentation

• Help create and maintain feedback loops with Engineering and Customer Support

• Interact with key strategic partners to facilitate our service of their customers and stand up support processes and coordination points with them

Service Operations

• Oversee the management of field service cases and reporting in Salesforce

• Represent the voice of the field (installers) in internal conversations, advocating for product serviceability and install-ability

• Manage the build out of our library of service dispatch/truck roll documentation and SOPs, including for example, clarity around what SPAN pays for and what we don’t

• Provide input into strategic questions around SPAN’s approach to field service operations

• Partner with SPAN’s supply chain, manufacturing, and quality group to support SPAN’s efforts on failure analysis of field failures as well as the relevant reverse logistics

• Ensure we have appropriate levels of service stock inventory by collaborating with others internally and externally

• Oversee RMA decisions and the prompt return of products from the field

About You

Required Qualifications

• Have 3+ years of management experience and 7+ years of overall experience

• Have deep experience troubleshooting complex hardware and software products

• Have experience working within a customer support ticketing tool

• Easily adapt your communication for different audiences (highly technical vs not technical)

• Are comfortable speaking with escalated customers and installers

• Are deeply empathetic and bring a customer orientation to your work

• Enjoy being a generalist and having your hands in a bit of everything

• Bring an entrepreneurial spirit and a love of problem solving to every challenge you encounter

• Are detail oriented, organized, and reliable. You do what you say you’re going to do and understand the importance of being the last point of escalation

• Are a strong communicator, both written and verbally

• Have a continuous improvement mindset

• Are a voracious learner on all subjects and enjoy knowing a little bit about a lot of things

• Are very scrappy and have a knack for excelling in complex and ambiguous situations

• Are willing and able to be based in our San Francisco office at least 3 days a week

Bonus Qualifications

• Worked previously in Zendesk and/or Salesforce

• Spent time in the field troubleshooting and/or repairing complex products

• Experience working as or with electricians

• Experience troubleshooting networking equipment/connected devices

• An understanding of solar, residential energy storage, embedded electronics, power electronics, AC and DC power, and/or electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE)

• Experience with databases and creating software tools for automated analysis (SQL, python)

• Experience troubleshooting networking issues and/or IoT devices

• Experience working in Linux systems

• Experience with SQL and command line interfaces

• Prior experience building out an escalated technical support and/or field service organization

The U.S. base salary range for this position is $115,000 - $136,000 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 across US locations. 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.

Life at SPAN

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.

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.

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