Job OverviewAt 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.
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.
