Senior Manager, Electrical Engineering & Controls

• Location 340 Shaw Rd,South San Francisco, CA, 94080,United States
• Base Pay $ - $ / Year
• Employee Type Exempt (FT)

About Burn Bot

Wildfire has stopped being a season. Burn Bot builds the machines that get ahead of it — remotely operated systems that apply and contain prescribed fire, and platforms that clear heavy fuel on terrain that isn’t safe for crews.

Our fleet is at work today for PG&E, CAL FIRE, the U.S. Forest Service, Caltrans, fire districts, and tribal nations across California, Oregon, and Washington — treating land at up to 40x the pace of conventional methods. We’re roboticists, engineers, and career fire practitioners. Hardware we design in South San Francisco is in the dirt within weeks, and the people who designed it are usually standing next to it.

Every machine we build runs on the electrical and controls stack: power, batteries, harnessing, sensors, radios, and the software that makes a 10,000-pound machine do exactly what a remote operator asked and nothing else.

You’ll lead the team that owns it — hiring, growing, and setting the technical bar — while staying close enough to the hardware to catch what a schematic review would miss.

The team. Hire, mentor, and run a group of electrical and controls engineers, and be the person they want to bring a hard problem to.

Electrical architecture across the fleet: power distribution, battery and high-voltage systems, harnessing, PCBA, sensors, and comms

Machine controls: embedded and PLC software, CAN networks, actuator control, and the interlocks that sit under all of it

Safety systems. E-stops, fault handling, and safe states — designed, documented, and proven, not assumed.

Field reliability: connectors, ingress, EMC, vibration, and heat. Most of what fails in the field is electrical, and you own that number

Suppliers and build partners, plus the schedule commitments your team makes to the rest of engineering

Requirements

8+ years in electrical engineering or controls, including experience leading engineers — formally or as the clear technical lead

Depth in vehicle or machine electrical systems: power distribution, batteries, harness design, and connectors that survive the field

Embedded or PLC controls experience, and fluency with CAN or similar industrial buses

A working understanding of functional safety and how to design for it

Hands-on debug ability. You can still find the fault with a scope and a multimeter.

Judgment about make-versus-buy, cost, and schedule — and the willingness to defend it

B.S. in electrical engineering or equivalent experience

Off-highway, agricultural, or construction equipment background

High-voltage battery pack design, BMS, or charging infrastructure

Radio, telemetry, or mesh networking in remote terrain with no cell coverage

ISO 13849 / machine safety certification experience

Growing a team from a handful of engineers to a real function

Summary

Based onsite in South San Francisco — design, build, and test all happen in one building, and being near the machines is most of the point

Flexible within that. You own your calendar: work the hours where you’re sharpest, and go remote on heads-down days.

Expect a few days a month in the field across California, Oregon, and Washington. Watching your work run on a live burn is the best part of the job.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Base salary: $170,000 – $215,000 — final offers reflect experience and demonstrated scope.

Burnbot is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including but not limited to, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with one or more disabilities, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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