Mainspring Energy
Senior Staff Systems Engineer
Menlo Park, CA, US
In-personFull time roleSenior Level
3 months ago
About the Job
Company Overview
Mainspring Energy is revolutionizing power generation with the world’s most flexible and adaptable onsite power generator, the Mainspring Linear Generator. Commercial, industrial, and utility leaders are choosing Mainspring over traditional options like engines, turbines, and fuel cells to quickly and reliably deliver local power for EV charging, commercial facilities, data centers, and grid-scale operations. The Mainspring Linear Generator is fuel flexible, ramps up and down to meet demand, and utilizes a flameless technology with near-zero NOx emissions.
Backed by top-tier investors such as Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, American Electric Power, and Lightrock, Mainspring designs, manufactures and delivers its products to customers across the U.S. today, and we’re quickly scaling for international expansion.
Inspired by our vision of the affordable, reliable, net-zero carbon grid, Mainspring is rapidly expanding within the $816B global electricity equipment market, and we’re hiring the best talent to meet growing customer demand around the globe. We welcome a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and talents to bring fresh perspectives and ongoing innovation to our customers.
We are looking to build relationships with people who share our values:
Pragmatic Optimism. Building a new category of world-class power generation requires the optimism of ambition and creativity, balanced with practicality to solve problems efficiently. The challenges that arise are opportunities for growth.
Excellence without Ego. We bring expertise and commitment to creating the best customer experience, from sales to deployment and service, just as we apply deep technical rigor to building and delivering world-class products. We strive for excellence and behave as leaders with the humility to acknowledge our challenges, both collectively and as individual contributors.
Proactive Collaboration. The integration and cross-disciplinary nature of Mainspring’s business requires intentionally seeking out others who bring different skills, perspectives, and priorities. Our culture of inclusion and respect extends beyond our team to interactions with our partners and customers.
More information can be found at www.mainspringenergy.com
Job Overview
Do you thrive on architecting and integrating complex multi-domain systems spanning software, electronics, and mechanical components? Do you enjoy defining system behaviors with requirements, analyzing real-world data, and ensuring robust, high-performance operation?
If so, Mainspring Energy has a high-impact opportunity for a Senior Staff Systems Engineer to join our world-class engineering team. This role will drive system-level architecture, performance analysis, and integration strategies for our Linear Generator—a sophisticated machine with electrical, mechanical, thermodynamic, and automation subsystems.
The Senior Staff Systems Engineer will play a key role in defining system behavior, analyzing performance trade-offs, and ensuring robust operation across operating conditions. This position requires strong interdisciplinary expertise and a deep understanding of how system components interact dynamically. A key focus of this role is defining system requirements that are structured, verifiable, and testable, ensuring alignment with the system validation process.
Responsibilities
- Capture and write clear, well-structured system requirements to ensure functional alignment and verification.
- Define system architecture and taxonomy, creating clear hierarchies of subsystems and interactions.
- Develop system behavior definitions, focusing on functional interactions beyond control algorithms.
- Create diagrams and visual representations to communicate system concepts effectively.
- Conduct data-driven system analysis to assess performance, identify issues, and validate solutions.
- Work closely with controls, software, electrical, and mechanical engineers to ensure robust system integration and firm interfaces.
- Drive cross-functional design reviews and system validation strategies.
System Focus Areas
- System Definition & Taxonomy – Creating clear hierarchical structures for how subsystems interact.
- Dynamic System Behaviors – Defining and analyzing how the system functions beyond control algorithms.
- Hardware-Software Integration – Defining and testing interfaces between real-time control systems and physical components.
- Data-Driven Analysis – Using experimental data and sensor feedback to refine system understanding and improve performance.
Qualifications
- Strong ability to define, capture, and communicate system-level requirements and architectures.
- Expertise in system behavior analysis, system interactions, and failure mode identification.
- Skilled in data-driven analysis and validation for system performance assessment.
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering (or equivalent field) with 15 years of experience, including at least 3 years in systems engineering.
Does your experience not meet all of our posted requirements? Studies have shown that some people are less likely to apply to positions unless they meet every listed requirement. At Mainspring, we are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, flexible, and collaborative environment, so if you want to help us transition the world to clean and affordable electricity, and don’t meet all posted requirements for a particular role, we’d still love to hear from you. Mainspring can sometimes be flexible enough to shift responsibilities for the right person, or otherwise identify open or upcoming roles that may better fit your professional background.
In more traditional words, Mainspring Energy, Inc is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.
This compensation and benefits information is based on Mainspring Energy's estimate as of the date of publication and may be modified in the future. We generally do not negotiate on salary once we have made an offer. The level of pay within the range will depend on a variety of job-related factors that may include location, relevant prior experience and/or education, or particular skills and expertise. New hires joining the company tend to be paid within the starting base pay range noted above, with opportunities to increase pay over time based on development of additional skills, competencies, and company-specific knowledge.
About the Company
Mainspring Energy
Menlo Park, CA, USA
251-500
<p class="text-steel f-b1 md-max:mb-d">At Mainspring we believe the fastest path to the net-zero carbon grid is vastly increasing the amount of solar and wind power while building a supporting clean energy system that ensures affordability and multi-day, cross-season resilience. Getting there requires flexible, scalable, local technologies that can adapt to the shifting grid landscape – including the transition from natural gas to renewable fuels like biogas, green ammonia, and green hydrogen.</p> <div> <p class="text-steel f-b1">The Mainspring Linear Generator delivers an unmatched level of flexibility for the transition ahead. It’s local so you can site where power is needed, it’s dispatchable so you can ramp up and down to complement renewables, and it’s fuel-flexible so you can operate on the cleanest fuels available today and in the future. Our products are already at work at Fortune 500 customer sites, accelerating the arrival of the net-zero carbon grid.</p> </div>
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