Recycling Operations Engineer Lead

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Oklo seeks an Operations Engineering Lead to establish the operating model for a nuclear fuel recycling facility. You will translate safety, regulatory, and operational needs into design requirements, procedures, and readiness criteria across design, construction, commissioning, startup, and ramp-up phases.

The role requires leading multidisciplinary teams, coordinating with Safety, Licensing, Security, and Maintenance to ensure safe, secure, and operable facility operations and a successful

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years in nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear, chemical, petrochemical, or related complex industrial processes.
• Experience in facility operations, commissioning, startup, maintenance, or operational support with design or capital projects.
• Experience with greenfield and/or brownfield facility development.
• Proven ability to translate design into operating requirements, procedures, and staffing needs.
• Strong technical writing, communication, and decision-making skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and configuration of the facility operations concept of operations across all modes.
• Translate regulatory and operational needs into design requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Represent operations in facility and system design to ensure safety, operability, and maintainability.
• Oversee staffing, procedures, training, maintenance, commissioning, startup, and ramp-up planning.
• Coordinate with multiple departments for system turnover, testing, and readiness reviews.
• Lead the operations engineering organization as the project matures and communicate readiness and risks.

Skills

Operations leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical writing

Decision making

Program development

Project management

Education

Bachelors degree in chemical, nuclear, mechanical, electrical, industrial engineering (or equivalent)

Job description

Thanks for your interest in Oklo! We are searching for an Operations Engineering Lead to join our engineering team.

Position Description

The Operations Engineering Lead is responsible for establishing the operating model and operations engineering basis for Oklo’s nuclear fuel recycling facility. This person will represent facility operations throughout design, construction, commissioning, startup, and ramp-up to ensure the facility is safe, secure, operable, maintainable, testable, and capable of meeting its performance objectives.

The Operations Engineering Lead will translate operational, safety, security, safeguards, material control and accountability, and regulatory needs into traceable design requirements, operating philosophies, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary operating limits, procedures, training programs, and readiness criteria. This role will work closely with Process Engineering, Instrumentation and Controls, Systems Engineering, Safety, Licensing, Regulatory, Security, Safeguards, Material Control and Accountability, Quality, Maintenance, Construction, and Project Management to integrate these needs into the facility design.

The ideal candidate has significant experience designing, commissioning, starting up, or operating nuclear fuel-cycle facilities. Candidates with substantial experience in complex chemical, petrochemical, refining, or similar process facilities will also be considered, particularly those who have supported both greenfield projects and brownfield modifications.

Specific responsibilities may include:

• Lead development and configuration control of the facility concept of operations, including normal operation, startup, shutdown, standby, maintenance, upset, degraded, and emergency operating modes.
• Translate operational, safety, security, safeguards, material control and accountability, and regulatory needs into traceable design requirements, operating philosophies, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary operating limits, and acceptance criteria, in coordination with the responsible functional owners.
• Represent operations throughout facility and system design to ensure equipment and systems are safe, secure, operable, maintainable, accessible, testable, and suitable for remote and radiological environments.
• Complete documented operability, maintainability, accessibility, remote-handling, operator-task, human-factors, and failure-recovery reviews, with identified actions assigned and tracked through disposition.
• Review PFDs, P&IDs, equipment specifications, layouts, control narratives, alarm strategies, human-machine interfaces, system descriptions, and safety-related design inputs from an operations perspective.
• Lead development of preliminary staffing, procedure, training, maintenance, commissioning, startup, facility-turnover, and production-ramp-up plans with defined interfaces, milestones, responsibilities, and acceptance criteria.
• Establish requirements for system turnover, walkdowns, pre-operational testing, cold commissioning, integrated testing, initial material introduction, and operational-readiness reviews.
• Participate in design reviews, hazard analyses, safety reviews, human-factors evaluations, maintainability reviews, readiness reviews, configuration management, and management-of-change activities.
• Coordinate with maintenance and reliability teams to define equipment criticality, preventive maintenance, spare parts, vendor support, work controls, and asset-management needs.
• Build and lead the operations engineering organization as the project matures, while communicating readiness status, risks, decisions, and unresolved design actions to project and technical leadership.

Minimum Qualifications:

• A bachelor’s degree in chemical, nuclear, mechanical, electrical, industrial, or another relevant engineering discipline, or equivalent directly applicable experience.
• 10 or more years of experience in nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear, chemical, petrochemical, refining, specialty chemical, or another complex industrial process environment.
• Significant experience in facility operations, commissioning, startup, maintenance, or operational support, combined with experience supporting facility design or capital projects.
• Experience with greenfield facility development, brownfield modifications, or both.
• Demonstrated experience developing or implementing commissioning, operational-readiness, procedure, training, maintenance, or startup programs.
• Ability to translate engineering designs into practical operating requirements, test plans, procedures, staffing needs, and acceptance criteria.
• Experience reviewing engineering documents such as PFDs, P&IDs, equipment specifications, control narratives, and system descriptions.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, manage interfaces, and deliver work in an evolving project environment.
• Strong technical writing, communication, organization, and decision-making skills.

Bonus Qualifications:

• Experience designing, commissioning, starting up, or operating a nuclear fuel-cycle or radioactive-material processing facility.
• Experience with nuclear fuel recycling, pyroprocessing, molten salts, remote handling, hot cells, radiological ventilation, or radioactive waste treatment.
• Experience delivering a first-of-a-kind nuclear, chemical, or industrial process facility.
• Knowledge of NRC, DOE, or comparable nuclear regulatory requirements and operational practices.
• Experience with operational-readiness reviews, pre-startup safety reviews, HAZOPs, human-factors evaluations, or process hazard analyses.
• Experience with control systems, alarm management, computerized maintenance systems, equipment reliability, or operator training programs.
• Experience building or leading an operations engineering, commissioning, startup, or plant technical-support team.

Competencies

We are looking for an Operations Engineering Lead that is:

• Technically grounded in the design, commissioning, startup, and operation of complex nuclear or industrial process facilities.
• Able to integrate operational, safety, security, safeguards, material control and accountability, and regulatory needs into traceable and practical design requirements.
• Skilled at converting a developing facility design into controlled operating concepts, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary operating limits, procedures, training, test plans, and readiness criteria.
• Capable of identifying operability, maintainability, accessibility, human-factors, remote-handling, and failure-recovery risks early enough to influence the design.
• Able to collaborate effectively with Safety, Licensing, Security, Safeguards, Material Control and Accountability, Engineering, Maintenance, Construction, and Commissioning organizations while maintaining clear ownership and interfaces.
• Practical and field-oriented, with the judgment to distinguish between a design that works analytically and one that can be safely operated, maintained, tested, and recovered in the field.
• Capable of balancing safety, security, reliability, facility performance, schedule, and cost when evaluating technical decisions.
• A strong multidisciplinary leader who establishes clear ownership, manages interfaces, mentors others, and drives actions through documented disposition.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, documenting assumptions, and making informed decisions with incomplete or evolving design information.
• A clear and effective communicator who can explain complex operational and technical issues verbally and through well-written, active-voice documents.
• Collaborative, detail-oriented, self-motivated, and accountable for delivering high-quality results.
• Passionate about clean energy and making advanced fission and nuclear fuel recycling a reality.
• Comfortable working and learning quickly in a fast-paced, highly itera