Lead OT Engineer — Nuclear SCADA & Team Growth

Blackwing; Torrance, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ownership

Medical benefits

Unlimited PTO

Daily lunch onsite

PPE stipend

Career growth

Autonomy

Impactful startup

Job summary

Valar Atomics is advancing high-temperature gas-cooled modular reactors. The Lead OT engineer for fuel will own the SCADA/OT function, build the OT team, and shape safety philosophy and regulatory approach across interfaces.

You will balance hands-on engineering with program leadership in a fast-moving, first-of-a-kind environment. You will collaborate across IC&E, Operations, Mechanical Engineering, Health Physics, Construction, and Quality, driving requirements, design standards, and lifecycle

Qualifications

• Ownership of OT or industrial control infrastructure for a demanding facility.
• Experience hiring/managing/developing engineers and building a technical team.
• Strong working knowledge of OT cybersecurity, historians/data systems, and OT infrastructure.
• Experience leading systems through requirements, design, procurement, integration, commissioning and operations.
• Ability to translate technical/regulatory/quality requirements into designs and tests.
• Experience managing vendors/contractors and holding them accountable for outcomes.
• Strong technical writing/visualization skills: diagrams, narratives, procedures.
• Formal degrees are not required; equivalent experience acceptable.

Responsibilities

• Own the fuel lab OT strategy, architecture, roadmap, schedule, and delivery.
• Build, hire, lead, and grow a multidisciplinary OT engineering team.
• Define system boundaries, design standards, interfaces, and acceptance criteria.
• Maintain technical authority over SCADA/OT while hands-on during design and commissioning.
• Lead design reviews, procurement, vendor selection, integration, and readiness.
• Own interfaces with IC&E, Operations, Mechanical Eng., Health Physics, Construction, Quality.
• Define config management, change control, cybersecurity, and lifecycle practices.
• Manage vendors/contractors, scopes of work, deliverables, and escalation.
• Communicate status, staffing needs, risks, and decisions clearly to leadership.

Skills

Industrial networking

Compute virtualization

OT cybersecurity

Server room infra

Vendor management

Technical writing

Architecture review

Team leadership

Education

Equivalent experience

Tools

Proxmox

Arista

Palo Alto

AVEVA PI

InfluxDB

SQL

Grafana

OPC UA

Job description

Valar Atomics is advancing high-temperature gas-cooled modular reactors. The Lead OT engineer for fuel will own the SCADA/OT function, build the OT team, and shape safety philosophy and regulatory approach across interfaces.

You will balance hands-on engineering with program leadership in a fast-moving, first-of-a-kind environment. You will collaborate across IC&E, Operations, Mechanical Engineering, Health Physics, Construction, and Quality, driving requirements, design standards, and lifecycle