Senior Plant Control Software Engineer

Fusion Energy Base; Everett (WA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, and Vision plans

PTO 31 Days (21 vacation, 10 sick)

10 Paid holidays, winter break

401(k) match up to 5%

Disability and life insurance

Parental leave and support

Annual wellness stipend

Job summary

Helion seeks a Senior Software Engineer for its Plant Control team in Everett, WA. You will design, build, and scale software that operates fusion generators and the Orion plant, interfacing with control systems, diagnostics, and data infrastructure.

You will own software across architecture and implementation, from prototyping to production, while collaborating with electrical, firmware, mechanical, IT, operations, and science teams onsite.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• End-to-end ownership of complex software projects.
• Strong programming in C++, Rust, or similar.
• Experience with Python or orchestration languages.
• Experience interfacing software with hardware, sensors, control systems, or real-world systems.
• Comfortable working in Linux environments.
• Experience designing maintainable software with tests, version control, debugging, and deployment.
• Ability to work across the full software lifecycle from requirements through production support.
• Strong systems-level problem-solving across software, hardware, networks, and data flows.
• Collaboration with engineers and scientists from multiple disciplines.
• Willingness to work onsite near hardware, operators, and users.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale software systems for plant control.
• Own interfaces connecting sensors, actuators, controllers, databases, and visualization tools.
• Create and improve tools for monitoring machine health, performance, test execution, and plant operations.
• Develop graphical interfaces for engineers, operators, and scientists working with fusion machines.
• Architect software that supports real-time control, data acquisition, and system coordination.
• Collaborate with Electrical Engineering, Firmware, Mechanical Engineering, IT, Operations, and Science teams.
• Improve reliability, usability, and scalability of internal control and diagnostic platforms.
• Investigate and introduce new tools, frameworks, and infrastructure to accelerate development.
• Apply first-principles thinking to ambiguous technical problems.

Skills

End-to-end ownership

Systems programming

C++

Rust

Python

Linux

Collaboration across disciplines

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or related field

Tools

Docker

CI/CD

InfluxDB

Grafana

Job description

Helion seeks a Senior Software Engineer for its Plant Control team in Everett, WA. You will design, build, and scale software that operates fusion generators and the Orion plant, interfacing with control systems, diagnostics, and data infrastructure.

You will own software across architecture and implementation, from prototyping to production, while collaborating with electrical, firmware, mechanical, IT, operations, and science teams onsite.