Senior Automation Engineer

SPAN; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

Premium benefits

Flexible hours

Office near transit

Job summary

SPAN, headquartered in San Francisco, is hiring a Senior Automation Engineer to strengthen quality and reliability across firmware, hardware, and software platforms. You will collaborate with Software, Device Software, Hardware Engineering, Systems, and QA teams to co-design automation infrastructure.

Responsibilities include diagnosing test failures, scaling hardware test rigs, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for physical hardware, enabling robust release qualification and telemetry-driven

Qualifications

• Proven ability to build reliable tools and services in Python.
• Able to read and reason about C++, Rust for debugging cross-boundaries.
• Experience with hardware-adjacent software and firmware test workflows.

Responsibilities

• Co-design test automation infrastructure with Systems and Test Infrastructure.
• Diagnose automated test failures across firmware, hardware, and test infra.
• Manage and grow a fleet of 50+ hardware test rigs across offices.
• Monitor hardware and software infrastructure health.

Skills

Python

C++

Rust

Embedded testing

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

gRPC

PostgreSQL

AWX

Ansible

Job description

Our Mission

SPAN is enabling electrification for all

We are a mission-driven company designing, building, and deploying products that electrify the built environment, reduce carbon emissions, 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

As a Senior Automation Engineer, you'll play a crucial role in ensuring the quality and reliability of our products through a combination of automated and manual testing methodologies. This is a high impact role that will work closely with SPAN’s internal Software, Device Software, Hardware Engineering, Systems, and QA teams.

Role & Responsibilities

As a Senior Automation Engineer, you will be expected to:

• Co-design test automation infrastructure with Systems and Test Infrastructure. Automation provides the platform and drivers; partner teams write the tests.

• Diagnose automated test failures across firmware, hardware, and test infrastructure.

• Help manage and grow a fleet of 50+ hardware test rigs across offices.

• Monitor hardware and software infrastructure health.

You will take architectural ownership of one or more of the team's critical systems. Examples of where you might focus:

• Hardware-in-the-loop test execution: on-premise orchestration of test sequences on physical hardware, integrated into CI/CD for PR gating and release qualification.

• Test data pipeline: telemetry ingestion from rigs, structured storage in PostgreSQL, reporting dashboards for release readiness and reliability.

• Test execution framework: instrument driver library, sequence engine, and the gRPC services that tie rigs together.

The specific focus depends on your strengths and the team's needs at the time you join.

About You

Required Qualifications

• Demonstrable proficiency building reliable tools and services in Python.

• Able to read and reason about C++, Rust, or similar. Not your daily language, but enough to follow a bug across a boundary.

• Experience with hardware-adjacent software: software that controls, monitors, or ingests data from physical devices or instruments.

• Experience owning internal platform infrastructure where your users are other engineers and your systems are in the critical path.

• Comfortable standing up new tooling from scratch and retiring it when needs change.

• Experience operating CI/CD infrastructure, particularly pipelines that run on physical hardware.

Additionally, there are two primary focus areas, you should fit into one or both of these:

HITL-relevant:

• Understanding of hardware-in-the-loop testing, reliability testing, and certification testing methodologies.

• Experience managing fleets of physical test cells or lab infrastructure (Ansible, AWX, or similar).

• Experience with embedded systems or firmware testing (CAN bus, SWD debugging, firmware update flows).

Framework-relevant:

• Experience with gRPC or similar RPC frameworks.

• Experience with lab instrumentation control. Power analyzers, load simulators, signal generators, relay boards.

• Experience designing automated test rigs or test cells from requirements through physical buildout to software integration.

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone who has:

• Experience working in a startup environment.

• Experience working in the renewable energy industry.

• Experience with Ansible or similar configuration management for physical infrastructure.

• Experience with or preference for a rapid or continuous release cadence

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: 100% employee premiums for base plans on medical, dental, vision with options for additional coverage. Parental leave up to twenty four (24) weeks depending on eligibility

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

Strong focus on team building and company culture: Employee Resource Groups, monthly social events, SPANcakes recognition breakfast, lunch, and learns

Flexible hours, one holiday per month, and flexible time off