Senior Research Engineer, Physical R&D

About Gridware

Gridware exists to enhance and protect the mother of all networks: the electrical grid. The grid touches everything and the consequences can be dire when it fails: wildfires burn, land is destroyed, property is damaged, and lives are lost.

Our team created an advanced sensing system to continuously analyze critical grid behavior. Utilizing high-precision sensor arrays and intelligence, our system identifies and preemptively mitigates faults. The technology has been proven with utilities to bolster safety, enhance reliability, and reduce outages. The demand for power will only increase. We protect the grid of today while we build the grid of tomorrow.

Gridware is privately held and backed by the best climate-tech and Silicon Valley investors. We are headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About the role

We are seeking a creative, fast-paced research engineer to join our growing Physical R&D team. You will be responsible for evaluating and developing novel sensing technology to expand our product offerings. The ideal candidate will be an expert in a theoretical area of classical physics and all steps of the physical experimentation process - from experimental design, to methods development, to analysis and reporting.

This is not a product design role. All project work is focused on early-stage research to de-risk development of potential, future products. The work focuses on iterative scientific experimentation to explore novel technology. It emphasizes experimentation and scientific computing over hardware development.

Responsibilities 

In this role you will:

• Independently design, develop, and execute physical experiments to evaluate new ways of measuring key physical electromechanical quantities.
• Rapidly prototype mechatronic hardware systems for physical experiments.
• Independently write clean code to analyze experimental results, perform exploratory data analysis, and model physical phenomena.
• Conduct literature reviews and research on novel sensing technology.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including data scientists, product development engineers, and product managers.

Requirements

To move forward in the application process you should have all of these:

• 3+ years of physical experimental design, development, and execution experience.
• 3+ years of quantitative modeling and analysis experience in a scientific computing language like MATLAB or Python.
• Experience using data acquisition systems to acquire time-series measurements of dynamical systems.
• Strong fundamentals in classical physics, with deep expertise in a topic area like dynamics, control systems, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, etc.

Bonus Skills

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t have the bonus skills listed below. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and growth.

• Hardware development: ability to develop mechatronic/robotic hardware prototypes independently (draft requirements, design for fabrication, CAD, perform various fabrication processes, test).
• Hardware development: familiarity with IoT systems or integrating mechanical designs with embedded hardware.
• Project leadership: can lead and deliver on complex, abstract, cross-functional problems with strict deadlines.
• Familiarity with measurement system theory and validation.
• Strong fundamentals in applied mathematics (linear algebra, ODEs, numerical analysis, dynamical systems).

This role is most relevant to people with degrees in:

• Mechanical Engineering
• Aerospace Engineering
• Physics

Benefits

• Health, Dental & Vision (Gold and Platinum with some providers plans fully covered) 

• Paid parental leave 

• Alternating day off (every other Monday)

• “Off the Grid”, a two week per year paid break for all employees. 

• Commuter allowance 

• Company-paid training