Principal Embedded Software Engineer

Company Overview

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

We are seeking a highly experienced and technically profound Embedded Software Architect to lead the design and evolution of our next‑generation product platforms. This critical role involves defining the architectural vision for embedded systems that require hard real‑time performance, sophisticated control algorithms, and seamless integration with hardware. The ideal candidate will have a deep track record of bringing complex, high‑reliability products to market, specifically those leveraging Real‑Time Operating Systems (RTOS) and advanced signal processing or control theory.

You will be instrumental in translating high‑level system requirements into robust, modular, and maintainable software architectures.

• Architectural Design: Define, document, and champion the end‑to‑end software architecture for embedded systems, ensuring compliance with system requirements for performance, safety, security, and reliability.
• RTOS and Control Systems: Serve as the subject matter expert for the implementation and optimization of Real‑Time Operating Systems (RTOS) and the integration of complex, high‑frequency control algorithms (e.g., state‑space, predictive control, PID loops, motor control).
• Technical Leadership: Guide and mentor embedded software development teams on best practices, design patterns, coding standards, and architectural decisions. Conduct rigorous design reviews and code inspections.
• Hardware‑Software Interface: Define the precise interfaces and interaction models between application software, low‑level drivers, and custom hardware components, including microcontrollers (MCUs) and Digital Signal Processors (DSPs).
• Platform Strategy: Drive the evolution of our embedded software platform, identifying opportunities for reuse, modularity, and migrating legacy codebases to modern architectural patterns.
• Performance Optimization: Analyze and…