Company Overview

Jaza is a solar energy start-up working to power Sub-Saharan Africa. We build solar-powered shops which charge batteries customers use to power their homes and businesses. Since 2022, we've achieved over 3 million battery swaps, providing approximately 225,000 people access to clean, affordable energy. We started our operations in Tanzania in 2017 and expanded to Nigeria in 2021.

We employ women from each community (known as Jaza Stars) to run the service, empowering our team to become leaders, entrepreneurs and drivers of economic growth within their communities. For more information on what we are building, check out www.jazaenergy.com and watch the video the BBC made about Jaza here.

Objective:
Jaza builds the batteries and charging systems, control and monitoring systems, and integration hardware that underlies the infrastructure we use to power communities. We currently have ~150 hubs and ~50,000 batteries in our fleet. We have product market fit in multiple markets. We are on the 3rd generation of hardware and are confident in it, but also have a lot of ideas for improvements. We can iterate and improve functionality of the batteries, battery chargers, and hub energy systems using over the air firmware updates. The roadmap includes incremental improvements to existing hardware designs as well as brand new products. We are looking for help to build the world's best battery systems.
The Electrical Engineer will play a critical role as the key contributor of electrical engineering and hardware design. As a member of our small but capable engineering team you will report to Jaza's CTO and will work with the engineering and leadership teams to deliver on the company's mission. You will be highly accountable to own your decisions, your work, and your outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• Lead design and development of new electrical engineering designs and system architectures
• Optimize for development speed and quality, but stick to a budget
• Rapidly develop and test PCBs with minimal revisions
• Work with suppliers and contract manufacturers to produce hardware from samples to mass production
• Design and execute test strategies to ensure product reliability during all phases of product life cycles
• Communicate frequently and develop excellent documentation
• Work to understand the user and how they use the product
• Use your expertise to help direct the technology organization and strategy

Requirements:
We are open to candidates from any background, however we believe the minimum requirements to excel at this position are:

• 5+ years experience designing hardware and PCBs for manufacturing at high volumes, especially battery management systems, power electronics, and switch-mode converters.
• Excellent understanding of lithium ion battery packs and their protection circuitry, DC power systems used for battery charging, analog measurements, serial communications.
• Experience with testing and quality engineering
• Embedded systems and firmware development is a plus
• Works effectively on a small team, great communication

Why Join Us!

• Work very hard on solving very hard problems.
• Be part of the most exciting growth phase of the company.
  
• Work with great teammates in a global environment. Our team is spread across Canada, China, Tanzania, New York and Nigeria.
• Diversity and Inclusion: In fostering a positive culture of belonging, everyone is valued regardless of background
• Competitive compensation package