R&D Test Engineer, Instrumentation

About Gridware

Gridware is a San Francisco-based technology company dedicated to protecting and enhancing the electrical grid. We pioneered a groundbreaking new class of grid management called active grid response (AGR), focused on monitoring the electrical, physical, and environmental aspects of the grid that affect reliability and safety. Gridware’s advanced Active Grid Response platform uses high-precision sensors to detect potential issues early, enabling proactive maintenance and fault mitigation.

This comprehensive approach helps improve safety, reduce outages, and ensure the grid operates efficiently. The company is backed by climate-tech and Silicon Valley investors. For more information, please visit www.

Gridware.io.

We are seeking a curious, hands‑on R&D Test Engineer with an instrumentation focus to join our Physical R&D team. You will own the test infrastructure our scientists depend on: designing and building fixtures, instrumenting test systems, developing data collection methods, running experiments, and turning one‑off prototype setups into repeatable systems.

Our scientists define what to investigate, and together you collaboratively define how; examples include fixturing, sensor selection, data acquisition, procedure, and controls. You will build the systems that make those tests possible, run the experiments, and ensure they produce trustworthy data. The work spans a wide range of environments, including our lab, warehouse, outdoor microgrid, and future pilot‑scale settings, each requiring solutions tailored to the environment and test goals.

You will also be the person who makes test methods durable. When an experiment or test grows past an exploratory stage, you mature it through designing fixture and sending updates, writing SOPs, or training others.

This role sits on the R&D team, which is responsible for the sensing and measurement performance of our devices rather than their design or implementation. It is not a reliability, qualification, or manufacturing test role. You will not own device design, though what you measure will regularly inform it.

• Develop and improve existing prototype physical experimentation infrastructure. Design and build test fixtures, rigs, and setups in collaboration with R&D Technicians and Research Engineers. Translate guidance and test intent from Research Engineers into a physical setup that produces trustworthy data.
• Architect, source, assemble, and operate electromechanical test setups end to end. Scope the build, select and procure components and instrumentation, manage vendors and machine shops, and get it working on the bench and at our test facilities.
• Instrument test articles and fixtures: select, mount, wire, and calibrate sensors (including strain gauges, load cells, accelerometers and IMUs, thermocouples, displacement and position sensors).
• Set up data acquisition systems using Lab View that collects and parses data in a format readily ingestible by down stream data processing pipelines.
• Run experiments, with an emphasis on tests that are novel, ambiguous, or still changing shape as researchers continue to learn and gain valuable insights from the test infrastructure you create. Prepare equipment, execute the test, keep clean records, and deliver organized, well‑labelled datasets.
• Work to improve repeatability via writing SOPs, setup and calibration procedures, and test reports. Train other teams and technicians to run mature test methods, and support the handoff until they are self‑sufficient.
• Partner with research engineers to turn test intent into an executable plan — asking the questions needed to be confident the test will actually answer the question being asked.
• Own our R&D lab and its equipment: fixtures, instrumentation, calibration status, consumables, and safe operation as well as plan and conduct preventative maintenance,

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering or related technical field, plus 3+ years of hands‑on test, instrumentation, or lab engineering experience. Equivalent practical experience is also welcome.
• Instrumentation fundamentals: sensor selection, mounting and wiring,…