Member of Technical Staff

The Nuclear Company; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 198,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

401(k) with company match

Job summary

The Nuclear Company is building a platform that accelerates deployment of next‑generation nuclear energy. You will design and ship AI systems that engineers rely on daily, including LLMs, retrieval pipelines, autonomous agents, and distributed backends.

You’ll work with AI researchers, software engineers, product managers, and nuclear domain experts to ensure correctness, reliability, and safety. This is a senior role that shapes product direction and engineering practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7–15+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python, with proficiency in at least one additional language (Go, Rust, C++, Java, or TypeScript).
• Experience building distributed systems and cloud‑native applications.
• Strong understanding of modern software architecture and engineering best practices.
• Experience developing production software with rigorous testing and CI/CD practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience working across teams to align technical decisions with product and business goals.
• Track record of shaping technical direction for a product or platform: defining roadmaps, making architecture calls, and seeing them through.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement production‑grade AI systems using large language models, retrieval systems, and autonomous agents.
• Develop scalable backend services and APIs supporting enterprise AI applications.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure model quality, reliability, and safety.
• Architect retrieval pipelines over engineering documents, technical standards, CAD data, and regulatory information.
• Develop tooling for prompt engineering, model orchestration, and agent workflows.
• Improve inference performance, latency, and operational reliability of AI services.
• Partner closely with nuclear engineers to translate complex engineering workflows into AI‑enabled products.
• Contribute across product architecture, infrastructure, ML systems, and developer tooling.
• Drive technical direction and uphold engineering excellence through code reviews, design discussions, and mentorship.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Communication

Software architecture

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in CS or related

Tools

Git

Docker

Kubernetes

APIs

Job description

The Nuclear Company is the fastest growing AI tech‑enabled startup in the nuclear and energy space, pioneering a fleet‑scale approach to building the next generation of nuclear reactors. Through our design‑once, build‑many model, we're accelerating the deployment of safe, reliable, and affordable nuclear energy.

We operate with an AI‑first mindset. Every employee is expected to leverage AI, technology, and the Nuclear Operating System (NOS) as integral components of their role to improve the quality, speed, and impact of their work. We expect every team member to continuously identify opportunities to automate workflows, enhance decision‑making, improve processes, and contribute to the ongoing evolution of NOS as a strategic operating capability that enables The Nuclear Company to scale with excellence.

We hire people who are driven by purpose, thrive in ambiguity, and are energized by building what has never been built before. Our team combines intellectual curiosity with high agency, embraces candid feedback and continuous learning, and holds itself and others to exceptional standards. Our values—Transparency, Responsibility, Unity, Scrappiness, and Tenacity—guide how we hire, collaborate, and make decisions every day. They are not words on a wall; they are the standard by which we operate. TRUST is the foundation of our safety culture, fostering intellectual honesty, accountability, and open communication, while our values challenge every team member to execute with urgency, humility, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to our mission.

About the Role

The Nuclear Company is building the AI platform that will accelerate the deployment of next‑generation nuclear energy. Our mission is to transform how nuclear infrastructure is designed, licensed, constructed, and operated by combining cutting‑edge artificial intelligence with deep engineering expertise.

Our platform enables engineers, utilities, EPC firms, and regulators to work faster, make better decisions, and deliver critical energy infrastructure with unprecedented efficiency and confidence.

We’re looking for exceptional engineers who enjoy solving technically ambitious problems with real‑world impact.

As a Member of Technical Staff, you’ll build the AI systems that nuclear engineers depend on every day: LLMs, retrieval pipelines, autonomous agents, distributed backends, and the developer infrastructure underneath. The people using your software design reactors, review safety analyses, and work through NRC filings. This is not a narrowly defined engineering role. Members of Technical Staff own difficult technical problems end‑to‑end, influence product direction, and collaborate closely with AI researchers, software engineers, product managers, and nuclear domain experts.

You should be excited about building production AI systems where correctness, explainability, reliability, and safety matter.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement production‑grade AI systems using large language models, retrieval systems, and autonomous agents.
• Develop scalable backend services and APIs supporting enterprise AI applications.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure model quality, reliability, and safety.
• Architect retrieval pipelines over engineering documents, technical standards, CAD data, and regulatory information.
• Develop tooling for prompt engineering, model orchestration, and agent workflows.
• Improve inference performance, latency, and operational reliability of AI services.
• Partner closely with nuclear engineers to translate complex engineering workflows into AI‑enabled products.
• Contribute across product architecture, infrastructure, ML systems, and developer tooling.
• Drive technical direction and uphold engineering excellence through code reviews, design discussions, and mentorship.

Required Experience

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7–15+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python, with proficiency in at least one additional language (Go, Rust, C++, Java, or TypeScript).
• Experience building distributed systems and cloud‑native applications.
• Strong understanding of modern software architecture and engineering best practices.
• Experience developing production software with rigorous testing and CI/CD practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience working across teams to align technical decisions with product and business goals.
• Track record of shaping technical direction for a product or platform: defining roadmaps, making architecture calls, and seeing them through.

Preferred Experience

• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG)
• AI agents and autonomous workflows
• Vector databases and semantic search
• Evaluation and benchmarking of foundation models
• Prompt engineering and model optimization
• Knowledge graphs
• Document intelligence and OCR
• Scientific computing
• High‑performance computing
• Nuclear engineering, energy systems, or industrial software
• Safety‑critical or regulated software development
• Competitive compensation packages
• 401(k) with company match

Estimated Starting Salary Range

The estimated starting salary range for this role is $198,000 - $255,000 annually, less applicable withholdings and deductions, paid on a bi‑weekly basis. The actual salary offered may vary based on relevant factors as determined in the Company’s discretion, which may include experience, qualifications, tenure, skill set, availability of qualified candidates, geographic location, certifications held, and other criteria deemed pertinent to the particular role.

EEO Statement

The Nuclear Company is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an environment of inclusion in the workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We prohibit discrimination in all aspects of employment, including hiring, promotion, demotion, transfer, compensation, and termination.

Export Control

Certain positions at The Nuclear Company may involve access to information and technology subject to export controls under U.S. law. Compliance with these export controls may result in The Nuclear Company limiting its consideration of certain applicants.