Director of Mechanical Engineering
Mainspring Energy · Menlo Park, CA
- Level
- Director+
- Team
- Reliability
- Experience asked
- 18+ years
- Industry
- Industrial
- Posted
- 30+ days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A director-level reliability role at Mainspring Energy (industrial) in Menlo Park, CA. BS or higher in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering field.
- They ask for
- 18+ years
- Tools it names
- Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ), Supplier quality, Robotics
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of October 19, 2026
Reliability Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $115k–$169k.
Median of the low and high ends of 69 live postings that list pay, out of 147 reliability engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 146 other live reliability postings in California.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (18+ vs 5+)
Typical $115k–$169k, from 68 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- Root cause 71%
- ✓ New product launch 41%
- FMEA 40%
- Automation 30%
- ✓ Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ) 28%
- Tooling 20%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
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- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Reliability team at Mainspring Energy
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- 4
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- 5
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One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
This plant: Mainspring Energy in Menlo Park
14 other open roles at this site · 2 people we found in reliability roles at Mainspring Energy.
- Vice President, Electrical Engineering · Reliability · Director+
- Sustaining Controls Engineer · Controls
- Senior Reaction Controls Engineer · Controls · Senior
- Senior/Staff Materials Process Engineer · Process · Senior
- Senior Materials and Process Engineer · Process · Senior
- Staff Materials and Process Engineer · Process · Senior
Full description from Mainspring EnergyAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
Responsibilities
Lead multiple mechanical engineering teams responsible for delivering high-quality subsystem designs from concept through manufacturing. Own a significant portion of the mechanical engineering project portfolio. Develop and lead managers/technical leads in the execution of these projects.
Be accountable for technical oversight, roadmap planning, engineering process discipline, and team development across your scope. Serve as a key escalation point for technical issues, project risk, and cross-team dependencies; remove blockers and ensure rapid, high-quality decisions.
Strengthen day-to-day engineering execution systems (e.g., project tracking hygiene, communication discipline, timely review/approval flows) so teams can scale without losing rigor.
Partner closely with Supply Chain, Supplier Quality, and Manufacturing teams to support sourcing decisions, supplier technical engagement, and fast resolution of technical issues in manufacturing.
Partner closely with Field, O&M, Test and Reliability teams to support issue triage, structured problem solving, and prevention of recurrence.
Qualifications
- ✓BS or higher in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering field.
- ✓18+ years of progressive mechanical engineering experience delivering complex hardware products, ideally in industrial equipment, energy systems, automotive, aerospace, robotics, climate tech, manufacturing equipment, or similarly demanding environments.
- ✓Experience leading mechanical engineers and/or engineering managers. We care more about demonstrated leadership quality, technical judgment, and ability to scale teams than exact org size.
- ✓Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals and practical design intuition developed through real design, test, manufacturing, reliability, or field experience.
- ✓Demonstrated ability to identify failure modes and technical risks in incomplete designs, early concepts, manufacturing issues, or field problems.
- ✓Experience operating in a startup, scale-up, new product introduction, or high-growth hardware environment where the path was not fully defined and process had to be built or improved.
- ✓Track record of helping a product, subsystem, or engineering organization mature: from early concept to production, low volume to higher volume, prototype to reliable fielded product, or chaotic execution to repeatable execution.
- ✓Ability to lead across many parallel projects while staying connected to the technical details that matter most.
- ✓Experience building or improving engineering systems such as requirements, design reviews, risk reviews, validation plans, release/change control, documentation practices, project tracking, or technical decision-making forums.
- ✓Strong people leadership: develops managers and senior engineers, creates clear ownership, gives direct feedback, builds accountability, and creates a supportive environment where people grow.
- ✓Comfortable being both strategic and hands-on. You can set direction for the organization, but you are also willing to go deep when the product or team needs it.
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About Mainspring
Mainspring Energy manufactures and delivers fuel-flexible, low-emissions local power solutions that rapidly add new capacity and deliver reliable, affordable, and sustainable electric power. The company began commercial shipments of its Mainspring Linear Generators in 2020 and today has hundreds of megawatts in advanced development and field operations for leading Fortune 500 companies, data centers, and utilities. Mainspring also partners with global energy leaders including AEP, NextEra Energy Resources, Schneider Electric, and more.
The core values that ground our work, guide our decisions, and connect us together:
Pragmatic Optimism
Excellence without Ego
Proactive Collaboration
Director of Mechanical Engineering
This is not a pure people-management role. We are looking for a hands-on mechanical engineering leader who has built real hardware, moved fast in imperfect environments, and developed the judgment to recognize technical risk before it becomes a field or manufacturing problem. You should be comfortable leading managers and senior engineers, but also capable of diving into a design review, asking the question that changes the direction of a project, and helping the team make a high-quality decision under uncertainty.
The ideal candidate has experience in a startup or high-growth hardware environment where process was incomplete, ownership was still being defined, and the product had to mature while the company was scaling. You may have helped take a product from early development into production, or you may have led major subsystems through repeated design, test, manufacturing, reliability, and field-learning cycles. You know that process matters, but you also know how to build just enough process to improve execution without slowing down creative engineering.
Reporting to the VP of Mechanical Engineering, you will lead multiple subsystem-focused teams, develop managers and technical leaders, raise the technical bar, and help the organization scale from heroic execution toward disciplined, repeatable product development.
Core
