Senior Backend Software Engineer

SPAN; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Parental leave

Transit-adjacent office near BART/Cal

Flexible hours

Job summary

SPAN is hiring a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our cloud software team, building the API layer and data processing that power SPAN Panel, SPAN Drive, and future products. You’ll bridge cloud and platform, shaping Kubernetes strategy, networking, and observability while delivering end‑to‑end features.

You’ll collaborate with data, mobile, web, and firmware teams to ship secure, scalable services and APIs that support homeowners, installers, and utilities.

Qualifications

• 4+ years backend engineering experience with ownership of projects and features.
• Experience collaborating with engineers from multiple domains to complete projects.
• Proficiency with cloud platforms and service-oriented architectures.
• Strong coding in Kotlin, TypeScript, and Python.
• Deep JVM expertise, performance tuning, and memory management.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features and subsystems in the SPAN Cloud for homeowners, installers, fleet and utilities.
• Bridge Cloud and Platform teams on deployment, reliability, and infrastructure design.
• Collaborate with product and design to understand customer needs and translate them into features.
• Coordinate between firmware, frontend, and backend teams to build cohesive products.
• Work with Kotlin and TypeScript in cloud environments using gRPC, REST, GraphQL, and MQTT to devices.
• Define APIs and data specifications for internal and external users, including large-scale customers.
• Mentor teammates and promote best practices across the engineering organization.
• Plan for scaling, major version upgrades, and long-term technical debt management.

Skills

Backend development

Kotlin

TypeScript

Python

Java/JVM

Kafka

Kubernetes

Observability

APIs (REST/grpc/GraphQL)

AWS

Tools

Datadog

Kubernetes

AWS

Job description

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 tell you more about the specific salary range for the location this role is based during the hiring process.

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

Building more resilient homes with reliable backup

Designing a flexible and distributed electrical grid

The Role

We are seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our team building the cloud‑based glue that gives our users access to the rich information and controls provided by SPAN Panel, SPAN Drive, and future generations of our products. Our system collects a large volume of energy monitoring data that needs to be stored, processed and exposed in different ways for different end users from homeowners to utility operators. We're also opening up never‑before available levels of control of the energy in the home that need to be accessed in secure and easy‑to‑use APIs.

You’ll join our cloud software engineering team and work with other engineers including data engineering, mobile, web, device software (firmware), and systems software teams. Working with the team, you’ll lead the design and implementation of systems that integrate our hardware, mobile apps, dashboards and external APIs. You'll work with product owners and other engineers to build features from start to finish. You'll bring deep infrastructure expertise to bear as a bridge between the Cloud and Platform teams — shaping Kubernetes strategy, networking architecture, and observability standards alongside building product features.

Responsibilities

Design and develop new features and subsystems in the SPAN Cloud to support a variety of end users from homeowners, installers, fleet and utility partners.

Bridge the Cloud and Platform teams on cross‑cutting work involving service deployment, reliability, and infrastructure design.

Work cross‑functionally with product and design teams to learn about our customers, identify solutions and develop the features that solve their needs

Collaborate between firmware, frontend and backend engineers on projects to seamlessly build a cohesive product

Work in our Kotlin and TypeScript cloud with gRPC, REST APIs and GraphQL as well as communicating with our IoT devices over MQTT.

Design APIs and data specifications for internal and external users, including large‑scale B2B enterprise clients.

Mentor and collaborate with team members, sharing knowledge and best practices to elevate the entire engineering organization

Maintain and evolve services over time, including planning for scaling, major version upgrades, and long‑term technical debt management

Act as the Cloud team's subject matter expert on Kubernetes, service networking, and observability — advising on architecture decisions and standards.

Potential Projects

Architect and co‑ordinate full‑stack solutions to enable new panel functionality such as geolocation‑specific demand reduction to assist in reducing peak power draw.

Design and build 3rd party cloud‑based integrations with a variety of other hardware partners

Scale our existing cloud and data infrastructure to support SPAN’s growing fleet

Build and maintain event‑driven systems using Kafka to process high‑volume energy monitoring data

Define and drive adoption of Kubernetes networking and observability standards (including service mesh and Datadog integration patterns) across the Cloud engineering team.

Integrate payment processing systems including app store payments and subscription billing

About You

Required Qualifications

4+ years of experience as a backend engineer with a track record of taking ownership of projects and features.

Experience collaborating with engineers from multiple domains to complete projects.

Experience with Cloud‑native platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure (we use AWS).

Experience collaborating with coworkers in shared code base using industry standard tools and processes including version control, type systems, linting and unit testing

Understanding engineering principles and processes to design robust, scalable and resilient systems

4+ years of professional experience in a common backend programming language and a desire to work with Kotlin, TypeScript, and Python

Strong JVM expertise with deep understanding of JVM internals, performance tuning, and memory management with proven track record of maintaining services over time, including planning for scaling, major version upgrades, and managing technical debt

Deep experience with Apache Kafka including topics, consumer groups, stream processing, and event‑driven architectures

Hands‑on Kubernetes experience including debugging workloads, understanding networking (DNS, ingress, service mesh), and advising on deployment architecture.

Experience operating observability platforms at scale (Datadog or equivalent) — dashboards, alerting, distributed tracing, and incident response.

Bonus Qualifications

We would love to hire someone with experience working in one or more of the following areas:

Internet of Things (IoT) products (e.g. AWS IoT, Google Cloud IoT, something homegrown) or other hardware component A variety of different datastores (e.g. SQL and noSQL, key‑value stores, document stores)

gRPC or GraphQL APIs.

Products with a rich mobile app

Infrastructure as code tools like Pulumi or Terraform etc.

Familiarity with Data Engineering technologies such as Flink and Spark

Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio or equivalent)

Spring Boot or Micronaut framework experience

App store payments or Stripe billing integration

B2B enterprise APIs and partner integrations

Experience with tenant isolation patterns (inside a broader multi‑tenant architecture)

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