Senior Manager, PLM Engineering Tools & Systems

Mainspring Energy•Menlo Park, CA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.
Strong communication skills and executive presence, with the ability to influence without direct authority and align technical and business stakeholders.
Deep understanding of PLM principles and lifecycle processes, including eBOM, mBOM, Service BOM, engineering change management, release processes, configuration management, and product traceability.
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.
Experience working with PLM platforms such as Enovia / 3DEXPERIENCE, SolidWorks, CATIA, and connected enterprise systems such as ERP, MES, WMS, and service platforms.
Proven track record of leading a team and complex, cross-functional business programs that require stakeholder alignment, prioritization, governance, and process change.
Ability to translate business needs into structured requirements, process definitions, operating models, and implementation plans.
Proven ability to work seamlessly across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, quality, service, and IT teams.
High intellectual curiosity, strong learning orientation, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while building practical, scalable solutions.

Responsibilities

Own PLM as a cross-functional business program, ensuring it supports company priorities across Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, and Field Service.
Define and maintain the PLM roadmap, aligning system capabilities and process improvements to business needs, scale requirements, and product lifecycle priorities.
Drive alignment across functional leaders on priorities, decisions, process standards, and investment needs related to PLM and connected engineering systems (Colab, SolidWorks, Altium 365).
Establish decision-making forums, ownership models, and governance processes for PLM enhancements, master data standards, change workflows, and business process adoption.
Partner with stakeholders to design and improve end-to-end lifecycle processes spanning eBOM, mBOM, Service BOM, engineering change management, configuration management, and traceability.
Translate business needs into sequenced workstreams, balancing short-term operational issues with longer-term platform and process maturity goals.
Lead organizational adoption of new PLM workflows, standards, and ways of working; ensure the right teams are engaged early and that changes are durable.
Assess process, system, and resource gaps that limit PLM effectiveness, and recommend staffing, workflow, or tooling changes needed to close them.
Define success metrics and ensure PLM investments are improving data quality, process efficiency, traceability, change execution, and cross-functional visibility.
Work closely with the PLM technical lead to translate business priorities into system requirements, feature releases, enhancements, and integration needs.
Help drive alignment across PLM, ERP, WMS, MES, and Salesforce FSM or other downstream systems that depend on accurate product and configuration data.
Write clear business requirements, user stories, and operating needs for developers, administrators, and implementation partners.
Support stakeholder readiness, communication, and training for PLM process updates, new capabilities, and role expectations.
Surface and resolve cross-functional blockers that impact data quality, execution speed, system usage, or business outcomes.
Run a clear operating rhythm for roadmap reviews, prioritization, business requirement intake, release readiness, and post-launch adoption follow-through.