R&D Infrastructure Software Engineering Co-op January- June 2025

Our Mission

SPAN is enabling electrification for all

SPAN is mission-driven to design, build, and deploy products that electrify our built environment, decarbonize our world, and slow the effects of climate change.

• Decarbonization is the process to reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, from entering our atmosphere.
• Electrification is the process of replacing fossil fuel appliances that run on gas or oil with all-electric upgrades for a cleaner way to power our lives.

At SPAN, we believe in:

• Enabling homes and vehicles powered by clean energy
• Making electrification upgrades possible
• Building more resilient homes with reliable backup
• Designing a flexible and distributed electrical grid

The Role

R&D Infrastructure at SPAN is a multi-skilled team able to create solutions for a wide variety of technological needs. Our skillset includes dedicated electrical, mechanical, fabrication, and software expertise. This enables rapid development of prototypes, experiment platforms, and hardware/software automation/monitoring frameworks. We value creative approaches to solving problems, and encourage building up new skills along the way. Our work accelerates SPAN R&D, and helps many other teams in hardware and software engineering on a daily basis.

As a software engineer on the R&D Infrastructure Team, you will implement mission-critical internal platforms enabling control, monitoring, and analysis of various experimental and test efforts. Your creative solutions will weave sensors, metrics, and logs into an accessible framework for capturing and understanding physical measurements. While exploring concepts from microcontroller analog sampling to cloud services, your work will have a daily impact on Span’s current and future products.

The co-op position has a duration of 6 months and will start the first half of 2025. Candidates must be enrolled in an accredited college or university, and have not graduated prior to end of the co-op term.

As we are a startup, this list should be considered neither exhaustive nor complete. We are excited for people to explore responsibilities outside their normal areas of expertise if the need or interest arises.

About You

Required Qualifications

• Good programming skills in one or more of Python, C, Rust, Node/Typescript
• Experience developing, deploying, and maintaining web and database applications
• Experience setting up and managing Linux-based systems, complete familiarity with common administration tasks, shell commands, package management etc.
• Able to collaborate effectively with coworkers in shared codebases, including competency with software versioning and documentation systems

Bonus Qualifications

• Familiarity with deploying and managing cloud-based services (including user management, security, permissions, roles)
• Experience developing functional front ends for internally-facing applications
• Experience building containerized applications
• Experience implementing low-level interfaces and protocols (serial, RS485, Modbus, etc)
• Experience with publish-subscribe communication methods such as MQTT
• Familiarity with embedded device firmware development (small Linux devices, microcontrollers)
• Experience with industrial devices and protocols, laboratory test gear and protocols
• Familiarity with electrical and electronic system concepts, high and low voltage wiring, understanding electrical measurements

Potential Projects:

• Develop and maintain flexible internally-facing web and backend applications for essential system management and fleet service tasks
• Assist with development of reliable data collection, processing, exploration, and presentation for long-term hardware test monitoring and alerts
• Assist with fast-response control and monitoring software for prototyping and short-term hardware/software research efforts
• Provide general assistance to other teams where cross-functional knowledge is needed
• Develop useful interfaces and drivers for physical test hardware and integrate incoming data sources with our monitoring and analysis platforms

The co-op position has a duration of 6 months and will run from January- June 2025. Candidates must be enrolled in an accredited college or university, and have not graduated prior to end of the co-op term.

The hourly rate for this role is $32/hr for undergrad students, and $35/hr for Masters or PhD students.

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.

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:

⚡ Great opportunity to begin your career at a mission driven climate focused company

⚡ Competitive compensation at a well-funded, venture-backed company

⚡ Comfortable, sunny office space located near BART and Caltrain public transit

⚡ Strong focus on team-building and company culture (events, meet-ups, clubs)

Interested in joining our team? Submit an application today and we’ll be in touch with next steps!