Senior Staff Project Strategist

Mainspring Energy, Inc.; Menlo Park (CA); Hybrid; USD 196,000 - 231,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

RSUs + benefits

Job summary

Mainspring Energy, Inc is seeking a Project Strategist to bridge product repeatability and full-site projects. You will define site requirements, translate customer needs into actionable product plans, and shape integration with controls, SCADA, and other systems across multiple sites.

The role requires architectural thinking, strong communication with EPCs and utilities, and the ability to drive standardized solutions while coordinating with delivery teams.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant professional experience, including 3–4 years in distributed power or industrial energy projects.
• Experience at the boundary between equipment and site, including balance of plant, MV switchgear, interconnection, or EPC scope.
• Familiarity with systems a site integrates with, like SCADA, building/energy management, solar, and storage.
• Technical background in Electrical/Mechanical engineering or related field.
• Experience with EPCs, developers, or utility interconnection teams on both sides of contracts.
• Understanding of performance guarantees, risk, and pricing.
• Strong written communication and cross-functional planning skills.

Responsibilities

• Define site requirements between repeatable product and full customer project.
• Distill site product requirements from design work via Applications Engineering.
• Interface with customers to capture monitoring, control, and dispatch needs.
• Define integration with building energy systems, solar, and storage.
• Translate market requirements into product architecture and standardization.
• Carry customer/market view into product requirements owned by Product Architect.
• Translate large-project strategy to smaller behind-the-meter sites.
• Collaborate with Project Delivery to form partnerships for site development at volume.
• Make strategic calls on guarantees, exposure, and risk.

Skills

Distributed power

Cross-functional communication

Program management

Electrical engineering

Education

Electrical Engineering degree

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

At Mainspring, Product Managers sit at the intersection of engineering, sales, marketing, installation, and maintenance. The Project Strategist sits one step further out, at the boundary between the product Mainspring repeats at every large site and the full site a customer is buying. This role defines everything in between, from balance of plant and switchgear to the equipment Mainspring may have to partner to supply and the customer-facing side of site communications and controls. It is the externally facing counterpart to the product owner of that repeatable suite, so a large part of the job is understanding what customers expect a linear generator site to do, how they expect to monitor and dispatch it, and what it has to connect to on their site. Our ideal Project Strategist has developed, engineered, or built power generation sites and can hold a technical conversation with an EPC, a utility interconnection engineer, and a data center owner in the same week. They enjoy taking an ambiguous set of customer expectations and turning it into a project development plan a company can execute and stand behind. Most importantly, they can make strategic decisions about what Mainspring must standardize as part of our site project offering, to reduce variability and increase reliability across sites.

Responsibilities

• Define the site requirements that sit between the product Mainspring repeats at every site and the full project a customer buys, covering balance of plant, switchgear, equipment such as transformers that may be sourced through partners, and the customer-facing side of site communications and connectivity
• Partner with the Applications Engineering team to distill site product requirements out of the design work they produce on the sites Mainspring builds today, so project experience becomes documented product requirements rather than tribal knowledge
• Interface directly with customers to understand what they want from a linear generator site, including how they expect to monitor, control, and dispatch it alongside their own systems, and quantify the gap between the product Mainspring offers today and the project the customer is buying
• Define how a Mainspring site integrates with the systems it has to operate alongside (e.g. building management and energy management systems, solar, battery energy storage, and other distributed energy resources), so integration requirements come from the market rather than from one project at a time
• Carry the customer and market view of that boundary into the product requirements owned by the Product Architect, so the communications and connectivity protocols and telemetry that Mainspring standardizes across every large site is what customers and their integrators can actually connect to and utilize
• Translate the large-project strategy into Mainspring's smaller behind-the-meter sites, so the product a behind-the-meter customer receives (communications and connectivity included) carries as little variability as possible, even though customer use cases in that market vary enormously
• Work with the Project Delivery team to learn from the installations already in the field, and form the supplier, EPC, and integrator partnerships needed to design and build sites at volume, including the case for insourcing EPC talent
• Make the strategic calls on company risk as Mainspring moves from selling equipment to developing sites, including how Mainspring’s guarantees have to change and what exposure that creates
• Collaborate with the Product Team Lead for the utility and data center verticals, translating the market requirements that role gathers into a site project development plan Mainspring can execute against

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant professional experience (or 9+ years with a PhD / 10+ years with a Master’s degree), including at least 3–4 years developing, engineering, or delivering distributed power generation or industrial energy projects
• Direct experience at the boundary between equipment and site, ideally including balance of plant design, medium-voltage switchgear, interconnection, site controls and communications, or EPC scope definition
• Familiarity with the systems a distributed generation site has to integrate with, ideally including customer SCADA or plant controls, building and energy management systems, solar, and battery energy storage
• Technical background, ideally with a degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• Experience working with EPCs, developers, or utility interconnection teams, ideally on both sides of a contractual boundary
• Familiarity with how performance, availability, and delivery guarantees are structured and priced, and with the risk they create for the party offering them
• Strong written communication and the organizational skills to hold a cross-functional plan together in a fast-paced startup environment

$196,000 - $231,000 a year

This is a hybrid position (onsite + remote) at our Menlo Park HQ. It will require you to be onsite as required to perform testing, troubleshooting, manufacturing support, etc. The salary will be adjusted to reflect local market conditions based on employee location as well as the experience of the employee. Along with base salary, Mainspring offers pre-IPO company equity through Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) + benefits.

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.