---
title: 'Senior Staff Project Strategist at Mainspring Energy'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-project-strategist-mainspring-energy-menlo-park-c8cw9gp291bk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-08'
---

# Senior Staff Project Strategist at Mainspring Energy

- **Company:** Mainspring Energy
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Compensation:** $196k–$231k
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/mainspringenergy/97dcba5a-02e6-4385-b3ed-75355d3f9e9a

## 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

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 Mainspring Energy

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mainspring Energy designs and manufactures fuel-flexible linear generators that provide low-emission, dispatchable onsite power for utilities, data centers, and industrial customers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series F)
- **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2010
- **Founders**: Shannon Miller

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Electric Power Generation
- Target customers: B2B – utilities, data center developers, enterprise, industrial
- Mission statement: "Redefining how local power is delivered to capacity constrained companies and communities" – enabling clean, reliable, and fuel-flexible power.

## Products & Services
- **[Linear Generator (LGen)]**: A flameless, fuel-flexible generator that converts gaseous fuels (natural gas, biogas, hydrogen, propane) into electricity with near-zero NOx emissions. Modular (0.25 MW per unit), fast-ramping (0-100% dispatchable), 46% electrical efficiency (LHV). Standardized 2.5 MW configuration (10 units). Suitable for grid-parallel or grid-independent operation, microgrids, and balancing renewables.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metrics**: Annual revenue $117M (latest fiscal year); total funding $813M; 407 employees
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: General Catalyst (led Series F, 2025, $258M), Lightrock (led Series E, 2022, $140M), BloombergNEF (grant), and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Powering the largest U.S. EV truck charging depot; >1 GW of capacity trusted by Fortune 500 companies and utilities; headcount growing +3.4% YoY; job postings up +121.4% YoY (62 active openings); recently expanded into data center market.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Fuel Flexibility**: Single generator can seamlessly switch between natural gas, RNG, hydrogen, and propane without hardware retrofits.
- **Near-Zero Emissions**: <1.5 ppm NOx (0.05 lb/MWh) – meets stringent air quality standards.
- **Dispatchability**: 0-100% load following, grid-independent operation, capable of firming renewables.
- **Low Maintenance**: Only two moving parts, no oil changes, modular design reduces downtime.
- **High Efficiency**: 46% electrical efficiency (LHV) across all scales.
- **Fast Deployment**: Factory-built, skid-mounted units enable rapid installation.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling manufacturing and deployment to meet growing demand from data centers and utilities.
- Advancing hydrogen and biogas compatibility to support long-term decarbonization.
- Expanding standardized 2.5 MW configurations to lower installed cost and accelerate timelines.
- Building a diverse, cross-disciplinary team to drive innovation in power generation.

## Why Work Here
- Culture of inclusion, respect, and collaboration across engineering, operations, and field teams.
- Emphasis on growth: "We invest in your growth because progress requires people who keep getting better."
- Hybrid/Remote options: headquarters in Menlo Park, manufacturing facilities, and remote field service roles.
- Active hiring across engineering (mechanical, electrical, software), operations, supply chain, and field service.
- Competitive salary ranges (e.g., Engineer ~$107k, Controls Engineer ~$109k, Manufacturing Engineer ~$91k) plus benefits.
- Diverse talent origins from Tesla, Stanford, Apple, SunPower, and other top clean energy companies.

## Sources
1. [mainspringenergy.com/company](https://www.mainspringenergy.com/company)
2. [mainspringenergy.com/careers](https://www.mainspringenergy.com/careers)
3. [jobs.lever.co/mainspringenergy](https://jobs.lever.co/mainspringenergy)
4. [linkedin.com/company/mainspringenergy](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mainspringenergy)
5. [mainspringenergy.com/product](https://www.mainspringenergy.com/product)

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