Staff CFD Modeling Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

About Mainspring

Mainspring Energy manufactures and delivers fuel-flexible, low-emissions local power solutions that rapidly add new capacity and deliver reliable, affordable, and sustainable electric power. The company began commercial shipments of its Mainspring Linear Generators in 2020 and today has hundreds of megawatts in advanced development and field operations for leading Fortune 500 companies, data centers, and utilities. Mainspring also partners with global energy leaders including AEP, NextEra Energy Resources, Schneider Electric, and more.

The core values that ground our work, guide our decisions, and connect us together:

• Pragmatic Optimism
• Excellence without Ego
• Proactive Collaboration

Job Overview

Do you have a favorite upwinding technique for hyperbolic PDEs? We have a high impact opportunity for a CFD Modeling Engineer to support the design, test, and manufacture of reliable and efficient linear generators at Mainspring Energy. On the system modeling and simulation team, you will have a central role in refining the way generators are designed through detailed fluid dynamic and thermochemical analysis, either for the direct assessment of proposed designs or to inform lower order models that describe system behavior. 

The ideal candidate can break down complex flow and multidimensional phenomena into fundamental behavior, enabling actionable feedback to improve our product.

Responsibilities

As part of this role, you will:

• Run commercial CFD software to analyze transient gas flow, chemical kinetics, and heat transfer. To execute this, you will need to:

  • Manage computational resources on local hardware and on the cloud (AWS / GCP)

  • Work with mechanical engineers to generate appropriate 3D models from CAD (Solidworks) suitable for mesh generation. Extract fluid volumes suitable for computational analysis. Generate, refine, and debug the mesh to achieve a stable and accurate simulation

  • Select appropriate boundary conditions and domain models to describe the phenomena to be examined

  • Shepard the solver through the computational process, managing and debugging crashes or other roadblocks on the path to a converged solution

  • Analyze and distill the detailed 3D domain results to communicate with the simulation stakeholders. Generate images and videos that highlight key phenomena

  • Understand and explain CFD principles to the team, knowing and communicating why different models or solver settings are applied within a given CFD package

• Generate test plans to validate observations gleaned from CFD simulations, or to get required boundary conditions needed to appropriately define a model. Oversee the execution of those plans on the generator with support from the test team

• Analyze test data to compare to the results of CFD and system simulations

• Generate lower order models for use in system-level simulations. Run system-level models to quantify the impact of design choices on generator performance

• Write code in C++ and python to automate CFD execution processes, improve system-level models, and couple lower order models to CFD boundary conditions while following software best practices and producing reliable, repeatable, and shareable code

• Participate in peer review of software written in support of modeling work throughout the team

• Generate written documentation of simulation results (presentations, reports, etc) for a variety of audiences at Mainspring

Your success in this role will be instrumental to unlocking power and efficiency improvements in Mainspring’s linear generators while maintaining near-zero emissions. At the root of our core mission, you will be collaborating across technical domains, frequently integrating with executives and other leaders of software, mechanical design, and product development.

Qualifications

• Graduate-level engineering degree (Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical, Chemical, etc) with 10+ years experience in Computational Fluid Dynamics and its applied mathematical foundations

• 2+ years experience with at least one commercial CFD package (Fluent, Star-CCM, Converge, etc) and one commercial CAD package (Solidworks, Catia, etc)

• Experience generating and validating custom models of varying fidelity (0D through 3D) in at least one programming language, e.g. C/C++, Python, Julia, etc

This position is a hybrid position (onsite + remote) at our Menlo Park HQ . The salary will be adjusted to reflect local market conditions based on employee location as well as the experience of the employee. Along with the base salary, Mainspring offers pre-IPO stock options + benefits.

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.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.