Senior CFD Engineer | Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics

Blackwing; Torrance (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Equity ownership

Medical benefits

Unlimited PTO

Free daily lunch and dinner onsite

PPE stipend

High-impact startup environment

Career growth

Job summary

Valar Atomics seeks a Senior CFD Analysis Engineer to own high-fidelity CFD/thermal-hydraulic analyses for reactor internals and balance-of-plant systems. You will translate physical problems into Ansys Fluent models, define V&V under nuclear quality requirements, and mentor junior analysts within the ModSim Engineering Group.

You will lead cross-disciplinary interfaces with the thermal-fluid, structural, and neutronics teams, establish CFD standards, and support regulator and customer

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, or Nuclear Engineering (or closely related field).
• 8+ years of professional, production-grade CFD analysis experience.
• Master's degree (preferred) in Mechanical, Aerospace, or Nuclear Engineering or related field.
• Experience with ASME V&V 20 and regulatory-quality programs.

Responsibilities

• Plan and perform high-fidelity CFD and conjugate-heat-transfer analyses in Ansys Fluent for reactor thermal-hydraulics, including geometry prep, meshing, turbulence-model selection, solver setup, and convergence checks.
• Establish and document the verification and validation basis for CFD work per ASME V&V 20, including mesh-convergence studies and benchmarking against data.
• Provide and receive boundary conditions across streams, exchange heat-transfer data with related domains, and support thermal-stress evaluation.
• Lead technical problem definition, review analyses, and produce reports meeting NQA-1 / 10 CFR 50 Appendix B traceability.

Skills

CFD analysis

ANSYS Fluent

Heat transfer

Nuclear engineering

Python scripting

HPC workflows

V&V

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical/Aerospace/Nuclear Engineering

Master's degree in related field

Tools

ANSYS Fluent

Flownex

FEA software

Python

Job description

Valar Atomics seeks a Senior CFD Analysis Engineer to own high-fidelity CFD/thermal-hydraulic analyses for reactor internals and balance-of-plant systems. You will translate physical problems into Ansys Fluent models, define V&V under nuclear quality requirements, and mentor junior analysts within the ModSim Engineering Group.

You will lead cross-disciplinary interfaces with the thermal-fluid, structural, and neutronics teams, establish CFD standards, and support regulator and customer