Director of Software Engineering

Mainspring Energy is revolutionizing power generation with the world’s most flexible and adaptable local power generation technology, 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 reaction with near‑zero NOx emissions. Backed by top‑tier investors including Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, American Electric Power, Lightrock, and General Catalyst 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.

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.

Position Title

Director of Software Engineering – Lead the Digital Backbone of Distributed Energy

Mainspring Energy is reinventing distributed power generation with our Linear Generator – a fuel‑flexible, ultra‑low emissions platform delivering resilient, on‑site power for commercial, industrial, and utility customers.

Now we’re scaling our fleet.

We’re looking for the right leader to own the cloud‑to‑field software ecosystem that powers, monitors, and optimizes our distributed energy assets. This is a rare opportunity to unify cloud, data, DevOps, and fleet software under one technical vision – and scale a platform that directly enables the energy transition.

This is not a SaaS role.

This is industrial‑grade, uptime‑critical, hardware‑connected software.

Responsibilities

• Ingest and process real‑time telemetry from thousands of generators
• Enable secure remote monitoring, diagnostics, and control
• Power predictive maintenance and fleet analytics
• Maintain a scalable “single source of truth” data platform
• Govern DevSecOps and release management across R&D, manufacturing, and field deployments
• When our software works, customers stay powered. When it doesn’t, the stakes are real.

Qualifications

• You are a systems thinker who understands that software decisions impact physical infrastructure.
• 10+ years in software engineering, including 5+ years in senior leadership.
• Experience in Industrial IoT, energy systems, industrial automation, or fleet‑scale device platforms.
• Ownership of device‑to‑cloud architectures and large telemetry pipelines.
• Deep experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Spark).
• Experience leading DevSecOps and secure remote control systems.
• A reliability‑first mindset – 99% uptime isn’t good enough.
• Proven track record of embedding AI into engineering workflows and product architecture – driving measurable gains in developer productivity, system reliability, data insight generation, and autonomous fleet optimization.

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.

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. 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.

This position is onsite 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.