Job Overview

At Mainspring, we are driven to create a better, more sustainable future by delivering innovative power generation technology. As our products, fleet, and operational complexity continue to scale, we are seeking a Senior Manager, PLM Engineering Tools & Systems leader to own PLM as a cross-functional business program and ensure it delivers measurable value across Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Field Service.

You will serve as the strategic business owner for Product Lifecycle Management at Mainspring-defining the roadmap, aligning leadership across functions, driving adoption and process change, helping prioritize work, identifying resource gaps, and ensuring PLM capabilities improve how we design, release, manufacture, trace, and service products across the full lifecycle.

This role will partner closely with the PLM technical leader and internal development resources to keep the system running, implement new features, cross-functionally plan platform upgrades, and improve integrations across connected business systems. While the technical team focuses on platform health and implementation, this role will focus on direction, governance, execution, and organizational alignment. This role is a Hybrid role at Mainspring's Headquarters in Menlo Park, CA.

Responsibilities

PLM Strategy, Governance & Roadmap

• Business Ownership: Own PLM as a cross-functional business program, ensuring it supports company priorities across Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Field Service.
• Roadmap Development: Define and maintain the PLM roadmap, aligning system capabilities and process improvements to business needs, scale requirements, and product lifecycle priorities.
• Leadership Alignment: Drive alignment across functional leaders on priorities, decisions, process standards, and investment needs related to PLM and connected engineering systems ( Colab, SolidWorks, Altium 365 ).
• Governance: Establish decision-making forums, ownership models, and governance processes for PLM enhancements, master data standards, change workflows, and business process adoption.

Cross-Functional Process & Execution Leadership

• Process Design: Partner with stakeholders to design and improve end-to-end lifecycle processes spanning eBOM, mBOM, Service BOM, engineering change management, configuration management, and traceability.
• Program Prioritization: Translate business needs into sequenced workstreams, balancing short-term operational issues with longer-term platform and process maturity goals.
• Change Management: Lead organizational adoption of new PLM workflows, standards, and ways of working; ensure the right teams are engaged early and that changes are durable.
• Gap Identification: Assess process, system, and resource gaps that limit PLM effectiveness, and recommend staffing, workflow, or tooling changes needed to close them.

PLM Systems & Business Value Delivery

• Value Realization: Define success metrics and ensure PLM investments are improving data quality, process efficiency, traceability, change execution, and cross-functional visibility.
• System Partnership: Work closely with the PLM technical lead to translate business priorities into system requirements, feature releases, enhancements, and integration needs.
• Connected Systems Alignment: Help drive alignment across PLM, ERP, WMS, MES, and Salesforce FSM or other downstream systems that depend on accurate product and configuration data.
• Requirements Definition: Write clear business requirements, user stories, and operating needs for developers, administrators, and implementation partners.

Stakeholder Enablement & Operating Rhythm

• Adoption & Training: Support stakeholder readiness, communication, and training for PLM process updates, new capabilities, and role expectations.
• Issue Resolution: Surface and resolve cross-functional blockers that impact data quality, execution speed, system usage, or business outcomes.
• Operating Cadence: Run a clear operating rhythm for roadmap reviews, prioritization, business requirement intake, release readiness, and post-launch adoption follow-through.

Qualifications

• Experience: 8+ years of relevant experience in PLM, engineering systems, configuration management, change management, or engineering operations in a complex hardware or manufacturing environment, including 3-5 years in a managerial or team-lead capacity. Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field preferred; mechanical engineering background strongly preferred.
• Communication & Influence: Strong communication skills and executive presence, with the ability to influence without direct authority and align technical and business stakeholders.
• PLM Expertise: Deep understanding of PLM principles and lifecycle processes, including eBOM, mBOM, Service BOM, engineering change management, release processes, configuration management, and product traceability.
• Engineering & Operations Fluency: Strong understanding of how physical products are designed, built, changed, and maintained in the field. Ability to connect engineering intent to manufacturing execution and service outcomes.
• System Knowledge: Experience working with PLM platforms such as Enovia / 3DEXPERIENCE, SolidWorks, CATIA, and connected enterprise systems such as ERP, MES, WMS, and service platforms.
• Leadership: Proven track record of leading a team and complex, cross-functional business programs that require stakeholder alignment, prioritization, governance, and process change.
• Requirements & Process Design: Ability to translate business needs into structured requirements, process definitions, operating models, and implementation plans.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven ability to work seamlessly across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, quality, service, and IT teams.
• Mindset: High intellectual curiosity, strong learning orientation, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while building practical, scalable solutions.

Success looks like

• Clear Ownership: PLM is operated as a well-defined business program with clear governance, accountable owners, and aligned cross-functional priorities.
• Practical Roadmap Execution: The company has a credible, sequenced PLM roadmap that balances operational needs with long-term scale.
• Strong Adoption: Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Service teams are using PLM-driven processes consistently and effectively.
• Improved Data & Process Health: Product structures, change workflows, and configuration data are more accurate, more timely, and more trusted across systems.
• Business Value Delivery: PLM investments measurably improve traceability, execution speed, process clarity, and lifecycle decision-making.
• Organizational Alignment: Leadership is aligned on priorities, tradeoffs, and resource needs, and PLM work is driven by clear business objectives rather than reactive requests.

$174,000 - $205,000 a year

This position is a hybrid position (onsite + remote) 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.

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.