Director of Utility Project Development

Company Overview

Driven by our vision of the affordable, reliable, net-zero carbon grid of the future, Mainspring has developed a new category of power generation — the linear generator — that delivers local, scalable, and fuel-flexible power to help accelerate the transition to the net-zero carbon grid.

The unique combination of attributes offered by Mainspring’s linear generator enables applications on both the commercial and utility sides of the meter for the $816B global electricity equipment market. We serve a wide range of Fortune 500 customers across markets and industries as well as top-tier utilities and other gridside providers.

We are looking to build relationships with people who share our values:

• Pragmatic Optimism. Building a new category of world-class power generation requires the optimism of ambition and creativity, balanced with practicality to solve problems efficiently. The challenges that arise are opportunities for growth.
• Excellence without Ego. We bring expertise and commitment to creating the best customer experience, from sales to deployment and service, just as we apply deep technical rigor to building and delivering world-class products. We strive for excellence and behave as leaders with the humility to acknowledge our challenges, both collectively and as individual contributors.
• Proactive Collaboration. The integration and cross-disciplinary nature of Mainspring’s business requires intentionally seeking out others who bring different skills, perspectives, and priorities. Our culture of inclusion and respect extends beyond our team to interactions with our partners and customers.

Mainspring is based in Menlo Park and has partnered with top-tier investors and utilities such as Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, NextEra, and American Electric Power. More information can be found at www.mainspringenergy.com.

Responsibilities

A key enabler of Mainspring’s mission to bring its scalable, fast-ramping, fuel-flexible capacity to the utility segment is the ability to seamlessly execute the permitting and development of utility-scale projects in conjunction with (and ultimately for hand off to) the project execution team. To that end, Mainspring wishes to fill its role of Director - Utility Development to build the teams and processes required to develop these projects across the United States. This key role will be accountable for (but not be limited to) the following:

• Directly manage first installations to gain first-hand experience with permitting processes (especially air, conditional use) for grid-scale linear generator projects

• Develop the project development strategy, processes, and partnerships required to achieve development of 10-200+ MW projects at distribution and transmission voltage

• Develop resources required for early stage development:

  • Interconnection

  • Air modeling

  • Land procurement

• Negotiate partnerships and master agreements with consultants) and other resources in target markets that can further our teams’ ability to develop projects swiftly and at low cost (especially during the speculative development phases)

• Be responsible for managing, hitting, and progressively declining cost targets for development process

Qualification

• 15+ years of demonstrated experience developing utility-scale BESS/solar/wind projects

• Demonstrated experience and full understanding/command of the following:

• Conditional use permitting/re-zoning

• Air permitting

• Real property rights and negotiating options to lease and purchase land

• Transmission-level interconnection processes (and gas interconnection processes preferred)

• Planning/Building department (AHJ) dynamics and schedule risks

• Team and process building

• Contract negotiation

• Budget Management

• Project Management and Project tracking/PM tools

• Demonstrated ability to innovate and refine processes to reduce cost and drive efficiency

The Bay Area salary for this role is $185,000-$216,750 base + significant variable compensation + pre-IPO stock options + benefits. This position is hybrid or remote. The salary will be adjusted to reflect local market conditions based on employee location as well as the experience of the employee.

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