Why our engineers have done on-site work for EV charging

Today in "never have I ever done this at another SWE job..."

Members of Flipturn's engineering team recently went on-site to connect some new chargers. The plot twist: the chargers were mounted 20 feet in the air, and required physically connecting a Windows laptop for configuration. So we rented lifts from Home Depot for the job.

Why engineers belong on-site

We're big believers that getting hands-on experience working on-site with real customers is the best way to build empathy for the drivers and site operators that interact with Flipturn every day.

At Flipturn, this philosophy runs deep. Every quarter, our entire team — engineers, product managers, sales, and customer success — comes together for an offsite that includes customer site visits. We've visited transit depots, last-mile delivery hubs, multifamily residential properties, and commercial parking facilities.

What on-site work teaches you

When you're physically at a depot watching operators interact with chargers, you notice things that never come through in a support ticket: environmental factors like extreme temperatures and tight spaces that affect hardware reliability, workflow patterns and how operators actually move between vehicles and chargers during shift changes, edge cases that only emerge in real-world conditions, and communication gaps between different teams on-site.

Our charger compatibility testing process was born from on-site observations. We discovered that certain charger models behave differently in the field than they do in lab conditions.

Building better products by understanding the problem

When our engineers have stood on a lift 20 feet in the air trying to configure a charger, they understand viscerally why remote configuration capabilities matter. When they've watched a site operator squint at a tablet trying to figure out which charger is faulted, they understand why we built our custom depot view designer.

Every member of our team is encouraged to spend time on-site, and it's one of the things that makes Flipturn's approach to EV charging management unique. Great software doesn't come from sitting in an office — it comes from understanding the real-world context where your code runs.

About Flipturn

Flipturn is a leading EV charging management platform, helping organizations maximize charger uptime, process charging payments, and scale operations efficiently. Backed by leading investors including CRV and Accel, Flipturn serves Fortune 500 companies, commercial property owners, and major fleet operators across North America.