Senior Systems Engineer: Fusion Plant Architect

Helion; Everett (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

31 Days PTO

401(k) match

Disability & life insurance

Parental leave

Wellness stipend

Job summary

Helion, based in Everett, WA, seeks a Sr Systems Engineer to own the system architecture and top-level requirements that knit the fusion plant together. You will drive trade studies, define ICDs, and lead cross-functional design reviews, ensuring traceability from plant objectives to hardware implementations.

You will partner with electrical, mechanical, controls, science, and business teams to evolve plant-level requirements, manage risks, and guide verification efforts, all while scaling

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in systems engineering with ownership of requirements, architecture, or interface definition on complex plant or hardware systems.
• Proven experience decomposing high-level plant or mission requirements into traceable, verifiable subsystem requirements.
• Proven experience authoring and owning ICDs across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Experience developing and executing verification and validation plans against system-level requirements.
• Strong technical writing and communication skills, with the ability to influence design decisions across disciplines without direct authority.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical consensus across cross-functional engineering teams.
• Comfort working across electrical, mechanical, controls, science, business, and software domains without being deeply expert in all of them.
• Demonstrated ability to operate in fast-paced development environments requiring both engineering rigor and speed.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain Helion's top-level plant requirements and decompose them into subsystem requirements.
• Lead trade studies informing major plant architecture decisions with clear rationale.
• Develop and own Interface Control Documents (ICDs) for plant interfaces.
• Lead plant-level design reviews (PDR/CDR) and surface risks for disposition.
• Assess and track integration risks, driving mitigation across teams.
• Manage configuration and change control for plant requirements and baselines.
• Coordinate with electrical, mechanical, controls, test, science, and business teams to keep designs aligned with intent.
• Represent the plant's technical position in leadership reviews and program fora.
• Scale systems engineering processes to production-ready power plants.

Skills

Systems engineering

Requirements analysis

Interface definition

ICD development

Technical writing

Cross-functional collaboration

Verification & validation

Multi-domain coordination

Rapid development

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering

Tools

Jama

DOORS

Teamcenter

Job description

Helion, based in Everett, WA, seeks a Sr Systems Engineer to own the system architecture and top-level requirements that knit the fusion plant together. You will drive trade studies, define ICDs, and lead cross-functional design reviews, ensuring traceability from plant objectives to hardware implementations.

You will partner with electrical, mechanical, controls, science, and business teams to evolve plant-level requirements, manage risks, and guide verification efforts, all while scaling