Lead Engineer, Strategic Partnerships

Commonwealth Fusion Systems; Harvard (MA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation with equity

Flexible vacation days

Health, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with employer matching

Professional growth opportunities

Team-building activities

Job summary

Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Harvard is looking for a Lead Engineer, Strategic Partnerships to drive technical collaborations and partnerships. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience managing technical projects with a budget exceeding $1M/year. Responsibilities include creating partnership visions, owning success stories, and working with various internal teams to facilitate strategic initiatives. The role offers a competitive salary range of $130,000 - $200,000 and benefits such as flexible vacation days and health insurance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years experience owning, developing or managing a technical project, with value exceeding $1M/year.
• Experience managing technical or business partnerships with multiple stakeholders.
• Ability to negotiate project contracts including IP terms.

Responsibilities

• Create a vision for technical partnerships and identify new collaborators.
• Own partner success stories and drive projects forward.
• Integrate with internal teams to understand relationship dynamics.
• Pitch and deliver new programs to internal stakeholders.
• Devise funding strategies for program development.
• Write proposals and project briefs.
• Manage collaborative program life-cycle and contracts.

Skills

Technical partnerships

Business operations

Strategic thinking

Exceptional communication

Problem-solving

Negotiation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering or a related technical field

Tools

Enterprise management systems (Confluence/Jira)

Job description

Lead Engineer, Strategic Partnerships

About Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is on a mission to deliver the urgent transition to fusion energy.

Combining decades of research, top talent, and new technologies, we’re designing and building commercially viable fusion power plants. And we're working with policymakers and suppliers to build the energy industry of the future.

We’re in the best position to make it happen. Since 2018, we’ve raised nearly $3 billion in capital, making us the largest and leading private fusion company in the world.

Now we’re looking for more thinkers, doers, builders, and makers to join us. People who’ll bring new perspectives, solve tough problems, and thrive as part of a team.

If that’s you and this role fits, we want to hear from you.

what you'll do:

• Create a vision for technical partnerships: Identify, recruit and build new collaborators, programs and relationships with the capabilities required to retire risk and accelerate roadmaps. Partners may include large and small companies, universities, National Labs, non-profit organizations, and foreign research organizations.
• Own partner success stories: Take ownership of existing relationships with key international public and private fusion programs and technical teams. Understand how our goals align and where they differ. Drive decision, projects and programs forward. Execute and evolve business processes, guided by technical and relationship insight, to accelerate the CFS commercial pathway.
• Connect the dots: Integrate with internal R&D, engineering, procurement and policy teams to understand the equities involved in a relationship, and how technical and business opportunities and risks can be pursued in the context they create.
• Imagine and create: Pitch, catalyze and deliver new programs and collaborations to CFS technical and business unit leads, and some of the best technical talent in the world, including at the world’s best-known companies. Support innovation processes across company divisions – unite and lead.
• Create opportunities: Devise and execute funding strategies for your program basket, including but not limited to government grants, in‑kind private collaborations, philanthropies, and other internal and external funding. You will have the ownership to make it happen.
• Write the CFS story: Write proposals, white papers, government grant applications, pitches, and relationship briefs that make clear opportunities and risks, with a bias to execution and speed.
• Tackle organizational complexity: Become the expert on your partners, programs, and projects, through insight and execution experience. Support the entire collaborative program life‑cycle, including launch, execution, and conclusion. This includes executing contracts, setting and tracking milestones and deliverables, and memorializing outputs.
• Technically capable business operator: You can read a technical paper and call a National Lab scientist to discuss it; then take a call with an internal commercial lead and external contracts agent or program owner to discuss terms and roadmaps. You are comfortable at the intersection of technical and business environments.
• Strategic thinker: You are able to parse, negotiate and plan your way through a field of intersecting, conflicting or incompletely known organizational roadmaps, finding and creating value where others don’t see it. You can plan the next chess move to advance one or more strategic partnerships, advocate for it, and catalyze internal and external teams to pursue it.
• Self‑starting dynamo: You have relentless energy and drive, and are driven to problem solve and take informed risks in a dynamic, quickly evolving business environment, while recognizing constraints and the needs of colleagues and external partners.
• Life‑long learner: You have an endless curiosity and have demonstrated ability to rapidly learn new, complex technical fields, to the extent that you can converse, plan and execute with experts in those fields.
• Exceptional communicator and negotiator: You have finely honed oral, written and extemporaneous communication skills, proven out in complex technical, programmatic and business environments. You are the person in the room who can crystallize, summarize, motivate and deliver insight. You are persuasive and are able to find win‑win solutions with partners.
• Problem solver: You direct your curiosity and energy into solving real problems on the ground, including technical, organizational, financial, and contractual. You can navigate complexity and act as a forcing function to real solutions.
• Mastery of details: You will be the person on your team that spots an inconsistency, missing requirement, gap, or alignment that turns into an opportunity or retires a risk. You can absorb, process, rank, and organize large quantities of information of different categories at high velocity.

What we’re looking for:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering or a related technical field
• 10+ years experience owning, developing or managing a technical project, program or product, with value exceeding $1M/year.
• 10+ years experience managing one or more technical or business partnerships comprising multiple stakeholders across diverse groups or institutions
• Experience building executive consensus and driving organizational alignment

Bonus points for:

• Master’s degree in the field of Engineering, Business, a field with a scientific component or another related field
• Experience negotiating project and program contracts, including IP terms, and including with public and private partners
• Experience with energy technologies, systems or markets – fusion energy a plus
• Familiarity with enterprise management systems such as Confluence/Jira or an equivalent

Must‑have requirements:

• Perform extended activities such as typing, standing, sitting for extended periods of time
• Willingness to travel or work required nights/weekends/on‑call occasionally
• Work in a facility that contains industrial hazards including heat, cold, noise, fumes, strong magnets, lead (Pb), high voltage, high current, pressure systems, and cryogenics
• May need to walk around lab, R&D, and manufacturing environments, and abide by all safety protocols for potential hazards including high magnetic fields, cryogenic liquids, large equipment, high power electronics, etc.

$130,000 - $200,000 a year

Benefits include:

• Competitive compensation with equity
• 13 Company‑wide Holidays
• Flexible vacation days
• 10 sick days
• Generous parental leave policy
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with employer matching
• Professional growth opportunities
• Team‑building activities

#LI-Hybrid

At CFS, we excel in fast‑paced environments, driven by our values of integrity, execution, impact, and self‑critique. As we grow, we’re eager to bring on mission‑driven folks who offer diverse perspectives and fresh ways to tackle challenges.

We value diversity deeply and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer by choice. We consider all qualified applicants equally, regardless of race, color, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, protected veteran status, religion, physical or mental disability, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, or any other basis protected by law.

This role requires compliance with U.S. laws concerning the export of controlled or protected technologies or information (collectively, "Export Control Laws"). Any offer of employment will be contingent on the need for compliance with such Export Control Laws.