What are the responsibilities and job description for the Field Application Engineer position at Optivolt?
Summary
At Optivolt our mission is to capture every last ray of the sun. We believe people are at their best when they’re living free from the burden of energy costs. The sun is the energy source of all life on earth, yet humanity captures almost none of what it offers.
To close that gap, we build solar systems that think — designed with aerospace power electronics inside to make solar more powerful, reliable, and cost effective than ever.
Critical to this mission is ensuring that Optivolt’s fleet expands reliability, with installers around the country benefiting from the proper support their business needs to succeed with Optivolt’s platform.
About the role
As Optivolt’s founding Field Applications Engineer, you are a hands-on technical field authority who makes sure installs go right, trains partners, and feeds field information back to our engineering team. You bring years of field leadership on complex solar installs paired with the engineering chops to shape how our technology serves our partners and homeowners.
You will be the tip of the spear for helping some of the nation’s biggest solar installers design, install, and train on the Optivolt Home Solar systems.
You'll help shape the training, documentation, and field processes that installers across the country run on. The role will also involve field deployment, validation, testing, and evaluation of current and prototype Optivolt systems.
What you'll do
- Help build the playbook and shape the Optivolt installer experience to be the best in the industry. Leverage years of experience as a site leader.
- Act as Optivolt's organization-wide domain and subject expert on product installation, roofing integration, authoring and updating technical documentation, install manuals, guides, and best practices.
- Aid installers in onboarding to the Optivolt platform in their initial site design and training.
- Be the voice to our partner network. Keep our partners functionally updated and supported on new breakthroughs in our experience and process.
- Provide remote support to install partner teams throughout their process.
- Take charge as the primary on-site technical lead to validate home solar designs, address emergent issues in real time, and capture comprehensive data from the field.
- Oversee, coordinate, and implement solar installation design in pilot installations and critical product deployments.
- Ensure install compliance with safety codes, building standards, roofing best practices, and Optivolt specifications.
- Conduct root cause analysis on field failures, installation defects, and performance anomalies.
- Deploy, validate, and test new, current, and prototype Optivolt systems.
- Track and report on system metrics and install metrics. Identify bottlenecks and improvements in labor efficiency, potential defects, and pitfalls.
- Work closely with our engineering teams to ensure the reliability, performance, and advantage of the Optivolt ecosystem.
- Deploy, test, and validate prototype systems and test sites
- You thrive in ambiguity and continuously push the bar forward.
Basic Qualifications
- Field Experience: 5–7 years on rooftops doing residential PV installs — not managing from a desk. Complex retrofits, full system integrations, the kind of work where you've seen everything go wrong and know how to keep it from happening again.
- Field Leadership: You've led crews. Whether your title was Lead Installer, Site Supervisor, or Technical Field Engineer, you've run jobs from design through commissioning, kept teams coordinated under pressure, and delivered on deadline.
- Technical Expertise: You know residential construction and roofing systems inside and out — structure, flashings, underlayments, the works. You understand general electrical principles, PV-specific wiring and NEC compliance, and energy storage safety. When something's off on a roof, you can diagnose it without a manual.
- Communication & Organization: You can explain what's happening in the field to an engineer, a present installer who's seeing Optivolt hardware for the first time, or a partner stakeholder — and make it land with all three. You're organized enough to operate independently in a startup where nobody's going to hand you a checklist.
- Data & Tools: You're comfortable tracking metrics, running efficiency studies, and using data to find what's slowing installs down. Excel, data loggers, whatever gets the job done.
- Tools & Travel: Proficient in Google Workspace. Willing to travel up to 30% for field pilots, installs, training, and site support.
- Education: Bachelor's in Engineering, Construction Management, or equivalent field experience.
- Credentials: NABCEP certification, electrical trade license, or similar credentials.
- Plus: Familiarity with SCADA systems or oscilloscopes. CPR/Low Voltage Rescue certified.
Why Optivolt
We're building a solar platform that actually makes installer’s jobs easier and their businesses more profitable. Optivolt’s Power Balancer centric systems extracts more energy from every panel, our systems are designed for faster installs, and our software gives partners real-time visibility into fleet performance.
As a founding team member, you won't just execute, you'll help shape the installer experience from the ground up. You'll have direct influence over product decisions, training programs, and field processes that scale nationally. Early equity, a small team that moves fast, and the chance to define what best-in-class field support looks like in solar.