Senior Manager, Electrical Engineering & Controls

About BurnBot

Wildfire has stopped being a season. BurnBot 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.

THE ROLE

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.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN

• 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

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• 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

NICE TO HAVE

• 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