Professional profile
Mara Voss
she/her
Inventor, clean-energy systems founder, and engineering leader
Oakland, California
Before you exploreHow this profile works
CandorBrief helps professionals share Resume/CV information with clear privacy choices and gives viewers focused prompts to understand the available experience more deeply. The information and next steps below reflect this profile’s current access setting.
CandorBrief turns the information this professional chooses to share into focused, copy-only prompts you can use with an external AI assistant. WordPress does not send profile information to an AI service.
This professional has chosen to make the selected information below available for public viewing. Review the profile at your own pace and use the available contact options when appropriate.
- Review the information the professional chose to make public.
- Use the focused AI prompts below to explore the public experience, capabilities, and evidence more deeply.
- Use a listed contact option or verified contact request when a conversation makes sense.
Review the selected experience, evidence, and contact options below.
Professional snapshot
Relevant experience6 roles
Founder and Chief Executive OfficerLumen Arc WorksMay 1, 2020 - Present
- Set the product, capital, and operating strategy from first prototype through three commercial pilot deployments.
- Built a 42-person team across electrical engineering, firmware, mechanical design, operations, field service, and commercial partnerships.
- Led customer discovery with utilities, manufacturers, and public-interest organizations to turn technical requirements into deployable product plans.
- Established a quarterly reliability review that connected field data, safety findings, supplier performance, and product roadmap decisions.
Chief Technology OfficerHelioWorks SystemsFebruary 1, 2017 - April 1, 2020
- Unified firmware, controls, data, and field engineering into one product-development organization with shared reliability measures.
- Reduced pilot-to-production handoff time by creating a staged architecture review and design-for-service process.
- Presented technical risk, product tradeoffs, and deployment readiness to the board, strategic partners, and enterprise customers.
- Mentored engineering directors and principal engineers through a period of rapid hiring and product expansion.
Co-Founder and Vice President of EngineeringFluxForge RoboticsSeptember 1, 2013 - January 1, 2017
- Led development of the first field-ready autonomous inspection platform, including sensing, motion control, fleet software, and operator workflows.
- Created a customer pilot program with clear safety, data-handling, and success criteria before deploying equipment on active sites.
- Grew the engineering team from four founding members to 24 people while preserving fast prototype-to-field feedback cycles.
- Supported acquisition diligence by documenting architecture decisions, patent portfolio, field performance, and supplier dependencies.
Principal Systems EngineerAtlas Field TechnologiesJune 1, 2010 - August 1, 2013
- Led cross-functional failure analysis after field incidents and translated findings into hardware, firmware, and service improvements.
- Developed test fixtures and acceptance criteria that improved repeatability across prototype and production builds.
- Partnered with operations to qualify suppliers and document manufacturing changes without losing traceability.
Senior Electrical EngineerMeridian Applied ResearchJuly 1, 2007 - May 1, 2010
- Built instrumentation plans that gave project teams usable performance data rather than isolated lab measurements.
- Collaborated with scientists, industrial designers, and software engineers to resolve tradeoffs early in the development cycle.
- Authored technical design records and customer-facing demonstrations for complex systems.
Electrical EngineerCrescent Circuit LabAugust 1, 2005 - June 1, 2007
- Supported field technicians by improving service documentation and creating practical diagnostic tools.
- Learned to balance elegant engineering solutions with cost, repairability, and the realities of customer deployment.
Core capabilities3 entries
Leadership and strategy
- Technical due diligence
- Board and investor communication
- Engineering organization design
- Partnership development
Systems and product development
- Industrial automation
- Embedded systems
- Hardware-software integration
- Reliability engineering
- Rapid prototyping
Operating disciplines
- Manufacturing readiness
- Safety and risk reviews
- Vendor qualification
- Customer discovery
- Technical storytelling
Skills and tools3 entries
Technical systems
- Embedded C
- Python
- Control systems
- Industrial communications
- Systems modeling
Product and operations
- Roadmap development
- Stage-gate reviews
- Manufacturing transfer
- Field reliability
- Supplier management
Leadership tools
- Technical writing
- Hiring and mentoring
- Facilitation
- Investor diligence
- Partnership negotiation
Leadership and speaking
Building Technical Teams That Can Explain Their Decisions
From Prototype to Public Value
Education
M.S. - Electrical and Systems EngineeringPacific Institute of TechnologySeptember 1, 2003 - June 1, 2005
B.S. - Electrical EngineeringCoastal State UniversitySeptember 1, 1999 - June 1, 2003
Languages3 entries
English
Spanish
German
Selected projects3 entries
Harborlight Resilience Pilot
ForgeSight Inspection Platform
Open Grid Reliability Toolkit
Certifications
Certified Systems Engineering ProfessionalInstitute for Applied Systems Practice2014
Fictional demonstration credential.
Functional Safety for Industrial Control SystemsNorth American Safety Guild2018
Fictional demonstration credential.
Awards
Frontier Systems Leadership Award
Applied Innovation Fellowship
Writing and publications
Designing for the Field, Not Just the Lab
The Reliability Conversation: A Founder’s Operating Guide
Additional information
Community and Mentorship
- Fictional advisor to a regional maker-space program focused on repairable clean-technology prototypes.
- Regular facilitator of small peer groups for technical leaders navigating their first executive role.
Professional Interests
- Restoring old workshop tools, long-distance cycling, and collecting field notebooks from engineering projects.
Explore further with focused prompts
AI prompts to understand Mara Voss better
Each prompt uses only the public evidence selected for this professional. CandorBrief does not run AI inside WordPress.
- Choose the question you want to explore.
- For a comparison question, add only the relevant job requirement or responsibility.
- Review the generated prompt and evidence, then copy or download it for an external AI tool.
- Verify any AI response against the professional’s actual materials and your own hiring process.
Shared prompt safeguards
These locked rules apply to every public CandorBrief prompt. They do not change what Profile content is public.
- Supplied profile evidence only is the default. The external AI is asked to use only the supplied Profile evidence and the context entered for this prompt.
- Some prompts also offer an off-by-default option to allow publicly available information. It does not require research. When used, every public-source claim must identify its source, direct URL, and access date; the information remains unverified and separate from supplied Profile evidence.
- Every response must begin with an evidence ledger that identifies supplied Profile evidence, visitor context, permitted public information, and information not established by those sources.
- The prompt asks an external AI to exclude prior chats, account memory, earlier searches, and unstated knowledge. This improves source discipline, but CandorBrief cannot technically control an external AI tool's memory or knowledge. For the clearest independent review, start in a new temporary chat.
Professional overview
Give a concise factual introduction to the professional’s stated focus, experience, and capabilities.
Relevant experience for a role
Compare documented experience with a supplied role, requirement, or short job description.
Verify before relying on external information. This allows, but does not require, public research. Any public-source claim should identify its source, direct URL, and access date. It may be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, or about a different person; treat it separately from this CandorBrief evidence.
Structured interview questions
Generate fair, evidence-based follow-up questions for a supplied role or requirement.
Verify before relying on external information. This allows, but does not require, public research. Any public-source claim should identify its source, direct URL, and access date. It may be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, or about a different person; treat it separately from this CandorBrief evidence.
Important: These prompts contain only professional-selected public evidence, and CandorBrief does not send any content to an AI service. When you copy or download a prompt, you choose what to share with an external tool. Do not add confidential job or company information. External tools may process content under their own policies, may not follow every instruction, and can produce inaccurate or incomplete output. Review the evidence ledger and verify any response; do not use it as the sole basis for a hiring decision.
When a conversation makes sense
Contact professional
Send a message through CandorBrief. Verify the email you submit before it is delivered to the professional.
Message Mara Voss
This demonstration shows the contact experience available on an active CandorBrief professional profile.
It is shown as an example. Messages are not sent or stored.
