Manager, CAD & Design Systems

Mainspring Energy•Menlo Park, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Mainspring is seeking a Manager, CAD & Design Systems to build and scale the Mechanical Engineering organization responsible for CAD operations, product definition, product integration, design release, and configuration management. The role sets strategy for how Mechanical Engineering creates, integrates, controls, and releases product definition as the Linear Generator and engineering organization grow in complexity. The manager will lead the existing CAD Operations supervisor and build a new Product Definition & Integration capability. The position combines CAD and mechanical product-development judgment with people leadership and a systems mindset. The manager will represent Mechanical Engineering’s needs for PLM workflows and partner with the Enterprise Software team to prioritize and deliver workflow improvements and automations; the role does not own the PLM software platform. The position is onsite at Mainspring’s Menlo Park headquarters. Salary is $180,000–$210,000 per year, adjusted for local market conditions and employee experience. Mainspring also offers pre-IPO stock options and benefits.

Requirements

BS or MS in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design, or a related technical field, or equivalent relevant experience.
10+ years of experience in mechanical product development, CAD, product definition, or related engineering disciplines.
At least 3 years of experience leading technical teams.
Deep experience with production CAD environments and strong working knowledge of SolidWorks or comparable parametric CAD systems.
Demonstrated experience improving CAD standards, engineering workflows, product-data quality, or design-release processes in a growing hardware organization.
Strong understanding of drawings, GD&T, BOMs, engineering changes, configuration control, and manufacturing handoffs.
Ability to build systems, processes, and teams that scale beyond day-to-day execution.
Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence Design Engineering, Manufacturing, Configuration Management, and software/tooling teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience with CATIA or another enterprise large-assembly CAD platform.
Experience with ENOVIA, 3DEXPERIENCE, or another enterprise PLM/PDM environment.
Experience building or maintaining full-product reference assemblies and product configuration strategies.
Experience scaling a CAD/design organization from a small transactional team into a broader product-definition and integration function.

Responsibilities

Define and execute the long-term strategy for CAD, product definition, design integration, release, and configuration management within Mechanical Engineering.
Lead and develop the CAD Operations and Product Definition & Integration teams, including hiring, capability development, workload planning, and career growth.
Own Mechanical Engineering CAD standards, modeling practices, drawing standards, templates, libraries, assembly architecture, and large-assembly methods.
Establish the strategy for SolidWorks and CATIA usage, including scalable methods for full-product and other very large assemblies.
Ensure the organization maintains authoritative POR and future-state reference assemblies so engineers design against the correct product definition.
Improve handoffs among Design Engineering, Product Definition, Release, Configuration Management, Manufacturing, and downstream teams to make design release faster and more reliable.
Represent Mechanical Engineering requirements for PLM workflows, issue resolution, and automation, and prioritize improvements based on engineering productivity and product risk.
Establish metrics and continuous-improvement mechanisms for CAD throughput, release cycle time, product-definition quality, configuration integrity, and team capacity.