Mainspring Energy

Staff Embedded Software Engineer

Menlo Park, CA, US

In-personFull time roleMid Level, Senior Level

2 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

This is a software engineering role with emphasis on embedded systems.

In the first week, you will close your first issue and review a colleague's merge-request.

In the first month, you will deliver your first driver for a new piece of hardware.

In the first year, you will contribute to the creation of our next generation architecture to enable continued expansion of our suite of sensors and actuators.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain embedded software in C, C++ and Python.
Lead the successful development of embedded software for various components in the system
Mentor junior members of the team
Invent communication protocols for use by in-house designed I/O devices
Select computer and network hardware to balance our performance needs vs. cost
Write emulators and unit-tests for continuous integration
Collaborate with Controls and Electrical to drive integrated hardware/software projects from initial research through to product release
Set up and maintain build environments, cross-compilation toolchains, and CI pipelines
Perform code reviews, unit testing, and integration testing
Contribute to the definition of processes and best-practices for the overall software development life cycle

Critically, you should enjoy doing these things collaboratively as part of a tightly-coupled and highly interactive team.

If you consider things you enjoy, you might be caught:

Building your own custom PC or your own home IoT system off a Raspberry Pi
Running an LLM on your local GPU
Contributing to /r/embedded
Sharing your experience with programming paradigms and best practices, and picking your colleagues brains for theirs
Letting the smoke out of some ICs (well… maybe not enjoy, but it has to happen sometimes!)
Working with people on finding and implementing solutions for complex problems

Qualifications

12+ years experience programming for embedded hardware systems including design, implementation, architecture, and testing (real-time a plus)
Expert proficiency in C/C++
Strong Python coding skills
Proven experience with Linux kernel builds, customization, and debugging
Hands-on experience with build systems, cross-compilation, and CI/CD workflows
Strong understanding of software architecture and interface design in embedded environments
Basic knowledge of electrical engineering fundamentals to support low level debugging
Passion for software engineering best practices
Experience with Docker for embedded development and deployment workflows
Drive to deliver complete software on time

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>

Similar Jobs

Staff Software Engineer, Embedded Systems

Lucid motors
Newark, CA, US
In-person
Full time role

Innovative electric vehicles redefining sustainable mobility and elevating the driving experience.

3 months ago

Software Engineer

Helion
Everett, WA, US
In-person
Full time role

Revolutionizing energy with unlimited, clean fusion power.

24 days ago

Embedded Security Engineer

Edag
Fremont, CA, US
In-person
Full time role

Pioneering sustainable vehicle and industrial solutions for a greener future.

24 days ago