Senior Staff Systems Engineer

Company Overview
Mainspring Energy is revolutionizing power generation with the world’s most flexible and adaptable onsite power generator, the Mainspring Linear Generator. Commercial, industrial, and utility leaders are choosing Mainspring over traditional options like engines, turbines, and fuel cells to quickly and reliably deliver local power for EV charging, commercial facilities, data centers, and grid-scale operations. The Mainspring Linear Generator is fuel flexible, ramps up and down to meet demand, and utilizes a flameless technology with near-zero NOx emissions.
Backed by top-tier investors such as Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, American Electric Power, and Lightrock, Mainspring designs, manufactures and delivers its products to customers across the U.S. today, and we’re quickly scaling for international expansion.
Inspired by our vision of the affordable, reliable, net-zero carbon grid, Mainspring is rapidly expanding within the $816B global electricity equipment market, and we’re hiring the best talent to meet growing customer demand around the globe. We welcome a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and talents to bring fresh perspectives and ongoing innovation to our customers.
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.
More information can be found at www.mainspringenergy.com
Job Overview
Do you thrive on architecting and integrating complex multi-domain systems spanning software, electronics, and mechanical components? Do you enjoy defining system behaviors with requirements, analyzing real-world data, and ensuring robust, high-performance operation?
If so, Mainspring Energy has a high-impact opportunity for a Senior Staff Systems Engineer to join our world-class engineering team. This role will drive system-level architecture, performance analysis, and integration strategies for our Linear Generator—a sophisticated machine with electrical, mechanical, thermodynamic, and automation subsystems.
The Senior Staff Systems Engineer will play a key role in defining system behavior, analyzing performance trade-offs, and ensuring robust operation across operating conditions. This position requires strong interdisciplinary expertise and a deep understanding of how system components interact dynamically. A key focus of this role is defining system requirements that are structured, verifiable, and testable, ensuring alignment with the system validation process.

Responsibilities

• Capture and write clear, well-structured system requirements to ensure functional alignment and verification.
• Define system architecture and taxonomy, creating clear hierarchies of subsystems and interactions.
• Develop system behavior definitions, focusing on functional interactions beyond control algorithms.
• Create diagrams and visual representations to communicate system concepts effectively.
• Conduct data-driven system analysis to assess performance, identify issues, and validate solutions.
• Work closely with controls, software, electrical, and mechanical engineers to ensure robust system integration and firm interfaces.
• Drive cross-functional design reviews and system validation strategies.

System Focus Areas

• System Definition & Taxonomy – Creating clear hierarchical structures for how subsystems interact.
• Dynamic System Behaviors – Defining and analyzing how the system functions beyond control algorithms.
• Hardware-Software Integration – Defining and testing interfaces between real-time control systems and physical components.
• Data-Driven Analysis – Using experimental data and sensor feedback to refine system understanding and improve performance.

Qualifications

• Strong ability to d