Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company with a mission to radically improve urban life. We aim to create inclusive, large-scale communities by bringing together an innovative planning approach, products and services designed to address urban challenges, and capital for real estate and advanced infrastructure. 

Since our founding in 2015, we've grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York and Toronto. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for inclusive growth, our work is both highly exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

To significantly improve sustainability and reduce costs  in buildings, Sidewalk Labs is developing new technology that will revolutionize electrical distribution within buildings by using new hardware and software. You will be working to build and integrate our advanced, next generation electrical systems for commercial and residential buildings. This system is a combination of hardware and software built internally and with third parties.

We are looking for a hardware engineer and prototyper to join our team. Your first project will be improving our existing low voltage DC power system used in offices.  This involves everything from circuit design to physical prototyping.  From there, it is working with partners to continue prototyping and designing the system.

This is a full-time, fixed-term position (salary, benefits, paid vacation, etc.). The contract will run from the start of employment for 6 months. As this is an early-stage product, conversion to full-time regular employment or an extension of full-time fixed-term will be based on a combination of personal performance and long-term investment in the product. We are happy to explain the details to you. 

What you have you achieve:

Within your first 6 months, you will:

• Designed and prototyped a low voltage DC power system for office desks.
• Implemented firmware for the system that allows for control and electrical metering.
• Created specifications for furniture and office spaces to use the system.
• Built a basic system to calculate carbon footprint of energy used.
• Integrated with IoT sensors to automate energy distribution.
• Build in security and privacy by design.

What we expect:

• Know your hardware engineering.
  • Have a strong engineering background which usually includes electrical, mechanical, industrial or robotics expertise, materials and production knowledge.
  • 2-4 years of industry experience.
  • Real expertise in prototyping and beautiful execution 
  • You have experience with creating products that blend the digital and physical–please share your portfolio if you have one.
  • You can judge and execute at the appropriate level of fidelity, from paper sketches to refined mocks for production.
• Bias towards action
  • Once you’ve sketched out an idea, you find the fastest path to a prototype to prove the concept.
  • Be creative: you’ll come up with new ideas based on your broad understanding of user needs, technological possibilities and city domain knowledge.
• Act as a technologist.
  • Bias towards action and shipping. Once you’ve sketched out an idea, you find the fastest path to a prototype to prove the concept.
  • Strong ability to write production code quickly.
  • You are obsessed with privacy and constantly ask how we can build privacy into product design.
  • Be comfortable with a range of languages and open source tools and frameworks, and make good decisions about which to use to solve a particular problem. You are excited to learn something new when the need arises. 
• Solve problems, together.
  • Come up with novel solutions, working well with non-technologists and others.
  • Ask hard questions and challenge assumptions to ensure that we’re solving the right problems.
  • Have flexibility to work on the team’s most pressing problems.
• Care. 
  • About cities, solving hard problems, and our team’s success.

We are very excited to hear from you. 

The community of the future is a place for everyone, and Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage members of underrepresented communities to apply. All employment is based on merit and business need.