{"id":20503,"url":"https://alion.io/job/span-staff-automation-engineer","title":"Senior Automation Engineer","company":{"id":5825,"name":"SPAN","domain":"span.io","url":"https://alion.io/company/span","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":94,"open_postings":28,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.036,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":91,"computed_at":"2026-09-30T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":135000,"max":200000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":200000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Ansible","optional":false},{"name":"AWX","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Configuration Management","optional":false},{"name":"gRPC","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-29T18:58:34Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-29","last_verified_at":"2026-09-30T18:19:04Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":124,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":123},"description":"Our Mission\nSPAN is enabling electrification for all\nWe 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.\nDecarbonization is the process to reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, from entering our atmosphere.\n\nElectrification 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.\n\nAt SPAN, we believe in:\nEnabling homes and vehicles powered by clean energy\n\nMaking electrification upgrades possible\n\nBuilding more resilient homes with reliable backup\n\nDesigning a flexible and distributed electrical grid\n\nThe Role\nAs 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.\nRole & Responsibilities\nAs a Senior Automation Engineer, you will be expected to:\nCo-design test automation infrastructure with Systems and Test Infrastructure. Automation provides the platform and drivers; partner teams write the tests.\n\nDiagnose automated test failures across firmware, hardware, and test infrastructure.\n\nHelp manage and grow a fleet of 50+ hardware test rigs across offices.\n\nMonitor hardware and software infrastructure health.\n\nYou will take architectural ownership of one or more of the team's critical systems. Examples of where you might focus:\nHardware-in-the-loop test execution: on-premise orchestration of test sequences on physical hardware, integrated into CI/CD for PR gating and release qualification.\n\nTest data pipeline: telemetry ingestion from rigs, structured storage in PostgreSQL, reporting dashboards for release readiness and reliability.\n\nTest execution framework: instrument driver library, sequence engine, and the gRPC services that tie rigs together.\n\nThe specific focus depends on your strengths and the team's needs at the time you join.\nAbout You\nRequired Qualifications\nDemonstrable proficiency building reliable tools and services in Python.\n\nAble to read and reason about C++, Rust, or similar. Not your daily language, but enough to follow a bug across a boundary.\n\nExperience with hardware-adjacent software: software that controls, monitors, or ingests data from physical devices or instruments.\n\nExperience owning internal platform infrastructure where your users are other engineers and your systems are in the critical path.\n\nComfortable standing up new tooling from scratch and retiring it when needs change.\n\nExperience operating CI/CD infrastructure, particularly pipelines that run on physical hardware.\n\nAdditionally, there are two primary focus areas, you should fit into one or both of these:\nHITL-relevant:\nUnderstanding of hardware-in-the-loop testing, reliability testing, and certification testing methodologies.\n\nExperience managing fleets of physical test cells or lab infrastructure (Ansible, AWX, or similar).\n\nExperience with embedded systems or firmware testing (CAN bus, SWD debugging, firmware update flows).\n\nFramework-relevant:\nExperience with gRPC or similar RPC frameworks.\n\nExperience with lab instrumentation control. Power analyzers, load simulators, signal generators, relay boards.\n\nExperience designing automated test rigs or test cells from requirements through physical buildout to software integration.\n\nBonus Qualifications\nWe would love to hire someone who has:\nExperience working in a startup environment.\n\nExperience working in the renewable energy industry.\n\nExperience with Ansible or similar configuration management for physical infrastructure.\n\nExperience with or preference for a rapid or continuous release cadence\n\nLife at SPAN\nHeadquartered 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.\nSPAN 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.\nWe’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.\nThe Perks:\nCompetitive compensation + equity grants at a well-funded, venture-backed company\nComprehensive 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\nComfortable, sunny office space located near BART and Caltrain public transit\nStrong focus on team building and company culture: Employee Resource Groups, monthly social events, SPANcakes recognition breakfast, lunch, and learns\nFlexible hours, one holiday per month, and flexible time off\nInterested in joining our team? Apply today and we’ll be in touch with the next steps!","description_format":"text","description_chars":5184,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible time off","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["EV Charging","HVAC & Refrigeration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-05-29T18:58:34Z"}],"liveness":{"score":31,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.698,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":123,"expected_fill_days":91,"reasons":["conf:5","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-09-30T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":200000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/span-staff-automation-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/span-staff-automation-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-01T01:01:49Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":801,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4199,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-02T00:00:00Z"}}}