Director of Mechanical Engineering

Core 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.

Additional information

Does your experience not meet all of our posted requirements? Studies have shown that some people are less likely to apply to positions unless they meet every listed requirement.

At Mainspring, we are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, flexible, and collaborative environment, so if you want to help us transition the world to clean and affordable electricity, and don’t meet all posted requirements for a particular role, we’d still love to hear from you.

Mainspring can sometimes be flexible enough to shift responsibilities for the right person, or otherwise identify open or upcoming roles that may better fit your professional background.

Pay and benefits

This compensation and benefits information is based on Mainspring Energy's estimate as of the date of publication and may be modified in the future. We generally do not negotiate on salary once we have made an offer. The level of pay within the range will depend on a variety of job-related factors that may include location, relevant prior experience and/or education, or particular skills and expertise.

New hires joining the company tend to be paid within the starting base pay range noted above, with opportunities to increase pay over time based on development of additional skills, competencies, and company-specific knowledge.