Structural Analyst II

Antares; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 145,000; Full time

Job summary

Antares in Torrance, CA is seeking an analyst to build and run thermal-structural models of reactor components in the R1 micro-reactor program, delivering designs that meet thermal, mechanical, and performance requirements under extreme environments.

You will provide design feedback, support testing campaigns, and help develop internal tools to speed analytical assessments, with collaboration across testing, design, and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering.
• 3+ years experience performing thermal and structural analysis.
• Experience building and running Non-Linear Thermal and Structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) models.
• Competent in use of CAD software for design modification and model defeaturing (Siemens NX or similar).
• Steady and Transient Thermal Modeling.

Responsibilities

• Build, run, and maintain FEA models of reactor components and subsystems.
• Provide thermal-mechanical assessments meeting regulatory requirements.
• Collaborate with designers to provide guidance on sizing and material selection.

Skills

Thermal analysis

Structural analysis

FEA modelling

Python

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering

Tools

Siemens NX

Python

MATLAB

Job description

About Us

At Antares, our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. We’re fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we’re building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially, underwater, and in space. The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Engineering.

About the Role

As an analyst at Antares your primary responsibility will be building and running thermal-structural models of components and subsystems throughout the reactor core and power conversion system to ensure our designs will meet thermal, mechanical, operational, and performance requirements within the extreme environments of our R1 micro-reactor. Design engineers will rely on your modeling and technical expertise for iterative design feedback and optimization, while adhering to best practices for DFM (design for manufacturing) and maintaining a rapid pace of development. Antares aims to maintain close collaboration between testing and analysis teams, and to this end you may often be asked to provide technical support before, during, and after test campaigns. This may take the form of cooperative planning of testing goals, instrumentation requests, root cause analysis in the event of failures, post-test data review, and model validation/anchoring.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Build, run, and maintain FEA (Finite Element Analysis) models of reactor components and subsystem assemblies
• Provide thermal-mechanical assessments of designs and ensure they meet the static, dynamic, thermal, fatigue, and creep requirements set out by Antares and our regulatory agencies
• Collaborate with designers and responsible engineers to provide guidance on initial sizing, material selection, and design feedback based on analytical results
• Compile detailed documentation of analytical results and communicate key results, assumptions, and limitations to key stakeholders throughout the company
• Provide support to test engineers in the form of collaborative test design, instrumentation selection, and data review to ensure test campaigns provide the necessary data to validate our models
• Develop internal tools and calculators to enable other engineers to quickly and independently perform analytical assessments of their designs without the need for detailed finite element models
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to other engineers and across teams

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering
• 3+ years experience performing thermal and structural analysis
• Experience building and running Non-Linear Thermal and Structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) models
• Competent in use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) software for design modification and model defeaturing (Siemens NX or similar)
• Steady and Transient Thermal Modeling

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Comfortable in fast-paced environment with rapid design iteration loops
• Low Cycle and High Cycle Fatigue Analysis
• Participation in regulatory qualification or certification programs for safety critical systems in the aerospace or nuclear industry
• Creep Analysis for high temperature applications
• Fracture Analysis and acceptable flaw characterization in production environments
• Dynamic Loads Analysis (Random Vibe, Modal Analysis, Explicit Dynamics)
• Tool writing in Python, MATLAB, or other programming language
• Familiar with ASME BPVC Section III Div 5
• Experience building and running Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models

Additional Requirements

• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones

Location

We are located in Torrance, CA in a 322,000 square foot, brand new facility featuring large open spaces for team collaboration, R&D, and production, as well as easy access to the 405, 105, and 110 freeways. Our facility is in the heart of Los Angeles' vibrant emerging tech ecosystem alongside many other high growth startups and enterprises.

Culture

At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document’s set of values–here are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful:Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, conflicting policies, perverse incentives, and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. “If you want to be certain, then you are apt to be obsolete.” Over-optimizing the components often degrades the systemObse

Equal Opportunity

Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, competence, and qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.