Lead Nuclear Methods Engineer: Design, Validation & Margin

Antares; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Antares in Los Angeles is seeking a Senior Nuclear Methods Engineer to develop, qualify, and improve nuclear analysis methods underpinning reactor design, safety, and licensing. You will own steady-state and transient analyses, validate methods, and translate results into design inputs for hardware development and operation.

The role emphasizes reducing uncertainty, recovering design margin, and applying lessons from testing and operation across the reactor lifecycle, collaborating with design,

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical discipline.
• 4+ years of professional experience in nuclear engineering, reactor physics, nuclear methods development, safety analysis, or a related field.
• Experience with reactor physics and transport tools such as MCNP, Serpent, SCALE, OpenMC, MOOSE-based applications, or similar codes.
• Experience with transient reactor analysis and coupled neutronics/thermal-hydraulics methods.
• Experience performing steady-state and/or transient analysis of nuclear reactor systems.
• Working knowledge of reactor physics, neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, or coupled Multiphysics analysis.
• Experience using nuclear analysis or simulation tools to support reactor design, safety analysis, or engineering decisions.
• Understanding of verification and validation (V&V), benchmarking, sensitivity analysis, and/or uncertainty quantification.
• Ability to translate analytical results into engineering requirements, design inputs, margins, and technical recommendations.
• Strong technical documentation skills with the ability to clearly communicate assumptions, methodologies, uncertainties, and results to multidisciplinary engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain steady-state and transient nuclear analysis methods used for reactor design, safety analysis, and licensing.
• Qualify analysis methods through code-to-code comparisons, benchmark problems, experimental validation, and uncertainty quantification.
• Establish, document, and maintain biases, uncertainties, conservatisms, and design margins across all nuclear analysis methods.
• Perform gap analyses to identify deficiencies in methods, validation data, tools, and technical capabilities, and develop plans to close those gaps.
• Ensure nuclear analysis products are directly mapped to the needs of the safety case, licensing basis, mechanical design, manufacturing, and hardware delivery.
• Develop sensitivity and uncertainty capabilities to quantify the impact of design changes, manufacturing tolerances, and operational variability on reactor performance and safety margins.
• Define best practices and analysis workflows that maintain traceability, consistency, and engineering rigor throughout the design lifecycle.
• Work closely with design, safety, licensing, materials, manufacturing, and testing teams to ensure analysis methods support program milestones and engineering decisions.
• Leverage data from component testing, integrated system testing, and reactor operation to continuously improve methods, reduce uncertainty, and recover design margin for future block upgrades.

Skills

Nuclear engineering

Reactor physics

Uncertainty quantification

Code validation

Python

C++

Technical documentation

Education

Bachelor's degree

Masters/PhD preferred

Tools

MCNP

Serpent

OpenMC

SCALE

MOOSE

Job description

Antares in Los Angeles is seeking a Senior Nuclear Methods Engineer to develop, qualify, and improve nuclear analysis methods underpinning reactor design, safety, and licensing. You will own steady-state and transient analyses, validate methods, and translate results into design inputs for hardware development and operation.

The role emphasizes reducing uncertainty, recovering design margin, and applying lessons from testing and operation across the reactor lifecycle, collaborating with design,