Staff Engineer - Release Management

About the Company

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.

The core values that ground our work, guide our decisions, and connect us together: Pragmatic Optimism, Excellence without Ego, and Proactive Collaboration.

About the Role

The Linear Generator is a complex fusion of high-performance hardware and sophisticated control software. As our Staff Engineer - Release Management, you will be the conductor of the release symphony, ensuring that every code deployment—from firmware tweaks to high-level system optimizations—is delivered to our fleet with precision, safety, and transparency. You will define the bridge between our engineering lab and the physical power plants in the field.

Responsibilities

• Architect the Deployment Strategy: Define the "how" and "when" for software bundles, balancing the need for rapid innovation with the stability required for industrial power generation.
• Version Control & Bundling: Manage the integrity of software bundles, ensuring that dependencies between product variants, edge computing modules, and cloud telemetry are synchronized.
• Risk Mitigation: Establish "Go/No-Go" criteria for releases and design robust rollback procedures to protect hardware assets in the field.
• The "What & Why": Translate technical pull requests into meaningful Release Notes for both internal engineering teams and external clients/stakeholders.
• Impact Assessment: Clearly communicate how a specific software bundle changes machine performance, efficiency, or maintenance intervals.
• Inter-departmental Liaison: Act as the primary point of contact between Software Engineering, Product Management, and Field Operations Command Center.
• Command Center Guidance: Provide the "playbook" for the Field Operations & Assembly (FOA) team. You define the sequence; they execute the update.
• Technical Support: Serve as the escalation point during the update window, helping FOA troubleshoot deployment failures or unexpected telemetry readings.
• Feedback Loop: Aggregate data from field deployments to help Engineering improve the "deployability" and reliability of future builds.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Release Engineering, DevOps, or Technical Project Management (preferred: Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) or IoT environments).
• Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins).
• Proficiency with configuration management tools.
• Exceptional ability to explain a C++ logic change to a technician.
• Exceptional ability to explain a business value proposition to a VP.
• "Measure twice, cut once" mindset with strong attention to detail.

What Success Looks Like

In your first six months, you will have moved our deployment process from a manual, "high-stress" event to a predictable, documented, and routine operation. You will ensure our field units are always running the best possible version of themselves.

Pay

The salary range for this position is $175,000 - $225,000 per year, adjusted to reflect local market conditions based on employee location and experience. Along with the base salary, Mainspring offers pre-IPO stock options and benefits.

Schedule

This position is onsite at our Menlo Park HQ.