Staff Release Engineer

Mainspring Energy•Menlo Park, CA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Mainspring Energy is revolutionizing power generation with the world’s most flexible and adaptable local power generation technology, 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 reaction with near-zero NOx emissions. Backed by top-tier investors including Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, American Electric Power, Lightrock, and General Catalyst 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 The Linear Generator is a complex fusion of high-performance hardware and sophisticated control software. As our Staff Release Engineer, you will be the conductor of the release symphony, ensuring that every code deployment—from firmware tweaks to high-level system optimizations—is delivered to our fleet with precision, safety, and transparency. You aren't just pushing "update"; you are defining the bridge between our engineering lab and the physical power plants in the field.

Requirements

5+ years in Release Engineering, DevOps, or Technical Project Management (preferred: Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) or IoT environments)
Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins)
Proficiency with configuration management tools
Exceptional ability to explain a C++ logic change to a technician
Exceptional ability to explain a business value proposition to a VP
“Measure twice, cut once” mindset with strong attention to detail

Responsibilities

Architect the Deployment Strategy: Define the "how" and "when" for software bundles, balancing the need for rapid innovation with the stability required for industrial power generation
Version Control & Bundling: Manage the integrity of software bundles, ensuring that dependencies between product variants, edge computing modules, and cloud telemetry are synchronized
Risk Mitigation: Establish "Go/No-Go" criteria for releases and design robust rollback procedures to protect hardware assets in the field
The "What & Why": Translate technical pull requests into meaningful Release Notes for both internal engineering teams and external clients/stakeholders
Impact Assessment: Clearly communicate how a specific software bundle changes machine performance, efficiency, or maintenance intervals
Inter-departmental Liaison: Act as the primary point of contact between Software Engineering, Product Management, and Field Operations
Command Center Guidance: Provide the "playbook" for the Field Operations & Assembly (FOA) team. You define the sequence; they execute the update
Technical Support: Serve as the escalation point during the update window, helping FOA troubleshoot deployment failures or unexpected telemetry readings
Feedback Loop: Aggregating data from field deployments to help Engineering improve the "deployability" and reliability of future builds