Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all. We create products, invest in new companies, and help plan innovative places around the world. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York City. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

We’ve launched innovative companies addressing urban mobility, next-generation infrastructure, and community-based healthcare, and invested in startups working on everything from robotic furniture to digital electricity. We continue to work internally on projects such as factory-made mass timber construction that can improve housing affordability and sustainability, a digital master-planning tool designed to help developers and communities achieve shared objectives, and a new approach to all-electric neighborhoods.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for sustainable and affordable growth, our work is both 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 fundamentally improve electrical distribution as well as building management using new hardware and software.  You will be working to build and integrate our advanced, next-generation electrical and building management systems for commercial and residential buildings. This system is a combination of hardware and software built internally and with third parties.

This work is fundamentally visionary, cross-cutting, and collaborative. In addition to our Product teams, you will work closely with hardware and software engineers, representatives from our Development team (which has responsibility for partnerships with real estate places); our Commercialization team (which have the responsibility for co-developing the business model, go-to-market strategy and negotiating strategic investments); and external technology and consulting partners, as required. 

You have years of experience leading and growing a business and will be hiring and managing a team of mostly software but also some hardware engineers, and potentially other product managers, as well as working closely with an ecosystem of hardware and other partners.

Day-to-day, you will work closely with these teams to:

• Deeply understand the everyday needs of real estate developers, property managers, construction firms, and device and appliance manufacturers, and use this knowledge to identify the best opportunities to leverage technology, software, hardware, and services to improve sustainability and building performance. 
• Take ambiguous and open-ended product ideas and figure out how to prioritize, breaking things into small parts and being clear on solving customer needs.
• Develop, detail, and prioritize a roadmap that balances shippable, near-term milestones with long-term vision.
• Incorporate Privacy by Design, a principles-based approach to responsible data use that considers privacy at all stages of technological development. 
• Execute pilots in real-world settings in partnership with developers, tenants, manufacturers, local municipal leaders, and partners across Sidewalk Labs.
• Launch and iterate exceptional products and services that have measurable, positive impact on urban life. 

What you have to achieve:

• Within your first month, you will dive into the work done to date on defining the 5-year product vision and the 18-month roadmap, asking critical questions and developing a strong point-of-view, working closely with our partners. You will quickly need to build a strong engineering and product team to execute.
• By the end of month three, you will have begun executing on near-term prototypes, helping to launch pilots and working in collaboration with your colleagues to mockup the next version of the product.
• From there, you will be responsible for executing on the long-term product roadmap. As a small team charting a lot of unknown territory, you will need to be flexible in working cross-functionally and integrating the specific product you’re focused upon into a comprehensive platform. You will be asked to partner or procure where possible. 

What we expect:

• Product experience 
  • You have extensive track record shipping world-class building and electrical infrastructure products, ideally across cloud and on premise hardware and software. For this you will have at least 15 years of experience. 
  • You understand the principles of electrical distribution or building management including relevant codes and standards. 
  • You are experienced leading both Agile and waterfall projects.
  • You know how to drive product development in operations in the short, medium, and long term.
  • You are comfortable with new ideas and innovation but you know how to balance the creative with the practical to deliver quality results on time and on budget.
  • You are obsessed with privacy and constantly ask how we can build data privacy into product design.
  • You have experience and track record sourcing technology as a combination of make vs. buy vs. partnership.
  • You have experience designing and developing APIs which will be consumed by internal and external developers.
  • You have experience designing and building within cloud infrastructure.
• Subject Matter Expertise
  • Strong understanding of electrical and data systems in buildings.
  • Strong experience with embedded systems and building management software, and Software as a Service.
  • Experience in enterprise software and Business to Business models.
  • Experience with the interactions of software, firmware, and hardware..
  • Experience developing IoT devices, power electronics, or MEPF equipment.
  • Understanding of building engineering and construction processes.
• Obsessed with user needs
  • Your product discovery process is deeply rooted in observing user needs and creatively solving problems to improve people’s lives, while also understanding how to address the needs of the buyer and other stakeholders who will influence the purchase decision and experience of the offering overall.
  • Your product strategies are driven by data, customer and user research interviews, surveys, and observational methodologies.
• Collaborative leadership
  • You have a strong ability to develop focused missions and inspire teams (both internally and externally) to execute, without having a large ego.
  • You are a great communicator, from boardroom presentations to user interviews, from engineers to urbanists. 
  • You can work in a multi-disciplinary, matrixed organization with the power to influence without authority.
  • You are committed to creating more equitable and inclusive outcomes both in the workplace and in the work you do.
• 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.
  • You have strong execution skills not only in managing processes, but also in defining and measuring success criteria, so that you’re constantly connecting values with measurements and goals.
• Passionate about cities
  • You have thought about the urban environment and care deeply about improving the lives of urban residents and workers. 
• Bonus Qualifications:
  • Experience working with any or all of the following: real estate developers, property managers, construction firms, device and appliance manufacturers.
  • Experience in promoting sustainability and affordability within buildings.
  • Experience working with technology alliances and standards bodies.

We are very excited to hear from you.

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.