Principal Software Architect - AI & Security

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 partners with global energy leaders including AEP, NextEra Energy Resources, and Schneider Electric.

About the role

Mainspring Energy is evolving beyond using AI for simple productivity gains. We are seeking a Principal Software Architect to lead our transition into an organization where AI agents are fully embedded in our engineering development cycles. This is a strategic leadership role focused on architecting the future of how we build linear generator technology. At the principal level, you will define the AI strategy for engineering development workflows, ensuring that AI-driven automation has clear structure, rigorous guardrails, and measurable Return on Investment (ROI).

Responsibilities

• Serve as the evangelist for AI-based architecture and champion cross-organizational adoption of AI and cybersecurity guardrails and standards.
• AI Governance & Safety Guardrails: Define and enforce robust AI governance frameworks within the GCP/Vertex AI ecosystem, implementing strict data privacy and security controls compliant with NERC CIP, ISO27001, and SOC2 standards to protect sensitive customer data and mission-critical fleet operations.
• Strategic Technology & Tooling: Provide technical leadership in selecting and maintaining the AI/ML stack while optimizing for latency, cost, and throughput constraints of our cloud-to-device architectures. Guide technology decisions to enable scalability, reliability, and availability guarantees.
• Agentic Workflows for Customer Outcomes: Identify, architect, and guide the implementation of agentic workflows to address critical customer pain points, such as autonomous fleet telemetry analysis and proactive diagnostic resolution, bridging cloud intelligence with embedded edge constraints.
• AI-Enabled Digital Twin Validation: Design validation pipelines that leverage agentic Digital Twin simulations to stress-test the software stack in a lab environment (utilizing Hardware-in-the-Loop/HWIL), ensuring system reliability and safety under diverse, high-volatility grid-edge conditions prior to deployment.
• Architectural Leadership & Domain Expertise: Drive the integration of Generative AI across the product development life cycle, applying experience in distributed systems, data, and IoT architecture. Strong preference for candidates with a demonstrated track record in industrial automation, energy-grid management, or power-generation and distribution industries.
• Innovation & Change Leadership: Champion innovation, collaborate across cross-functional organizations, secure leadership buy-in for strategic initiatives, and serve as a catalyst for organizational change.

Requirements

• AI Expertise: GCP/Vertex AI ecosystem, Generative AI, LLMs, and agentic workflows.
• Cloud Tech Stack: Extensive back-end, distributed systems, and production software development experience. Deep experience with managed cloud services (GCS/AWS) for scalable, reliable, and available systems.
• IoT & Systems Engineering: Demonstrated track record in hardware-software integration with experience in IoT, industrial automation, energy-grid management, or power-generation/distribution industries. Experience managing cloud-to-device architectures with edge constraints, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) simulation, and secure Over-the-Air (OTA) update management.
• Compliance & Security: Experience building software that meets strong cybersecurity requirements (e.g., NERC CIP, ISO27001, SOC2). Strong focus on software "ilities": reliability, maintainability, scalability, usability, testability, monitorability, deployability, and extensibility.
• Leadership: Ability to make reasoned technical trade-offs between shorter-term stakeholder requirements and longer-term product roadmap. Extensive experience as a team lead, mentor, and architect on multi-year product deliverables.
• Communication: Ability to communicate technology choices, technical architecture, and trade-offs to diverse audiences, including executive leadership, business stakeholders, and implementation teams.

What Principal Level Means at Mainspring

At the principal level, you are the architect of the strategy, not just the executor. You are expected to define the technical roadmap that transforms our engineering culture, acting as a multiplier who elevates the entire organization's capability through AI.

Pay

The salary range for this role is $220,000 – $280,000 per year. The level of pay within the range will depend on a variety of job-related factors, including location, relevant prior experience, education, and particular skills or 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. Salary will be adjusted to reflect local market conditions based on employee location.

Benefits

• Pre-IPO stock options
• Comprehensive benefits package

This position is open to both onsite and remote candidates.