Simplifying Residential Solar Through Better Software

Residential solar projects involve a surprising amount of complexity.

Every installation requires balancing roof geometry, equipment constraints, electrical design, energy production estimates, local regulations, financing, and customer expectations. The professionals using the software weren't software experts—they were solar designers, sales consultants, and operations teams trying to make accurate decisions quickly.

The challenge wasn't simply building another business application. It was designing software that could make an inherently complicated process feel intuitive.

As a Senior Software Engineer at Sighten, I was responsible for developing key customer-facing applications used throughout the residential solar workflow. I partnered closely with product managers, designers, and fellow engineers to translate complex business requirements into practical, approachable user experiences.

One of my primary areas of ownership was the solar design tool, along with broader SaaS functionality that supported the end-to-end customer journey.

The solar design experience sat at the center of the platform.

Users needed to evaluate properties, configure solar layouts, estimate production, and generate accurate proposals—all while navigating a workflow with significant technical and regulatory complexity.

Rather than exposing that complexity directly, we focused on creating interfaces that guided users naturally through each step. Every interaction required balancing flexibility for experienced professionals with clarity for users who simply wanted to complete their work efficiently.

This meant thinking carefully about workflow design, validation, responsiveness, and how information was presented—not just implementing features.

The application was built using AngularJS during a period when rich single-page applications were becoming the standard for sophisticated business software.

Beyond implementing new functionality, a significant part of the work involved organizing increasingly complex frontend code into maintainable components, collaborating across teams, and ensuring the application remained responsive as new capabilities were added.

Working in a rapidly evolving product also required continual collaboration with product and design teams as customer feedback shaped the roadmap.

The software helped streamline a traditionally manual and fragmented process, allowing solar professionals to move more efficiently from system design through proposal and project planning.

For me, the project reinforced an idea that has continued throughout my career:

The most valuable engineering often isn't about exposing complexity—it's about hiding it behind thoughtful design and reliable software.

Working on Sighten fundamentally shaped how I think about frontend engineering.

I learned that the hardest problems are rarely technical in isolation. The real challenge is understanding a complicated business domain deeply enough to build software that feels straightforward to the people using it every day.

That philosophy has continued to guide my work across EV charging, fleet management, and other enterprise products: complex systems deserve simple experiences.