Turbomachinery Design Lead for Nuclear Reactors

53 Stations; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Antares seeks a senior turbomachinery engineer to own turbomachinery hardware from concept through production. You will coordinate analysis, design, manufacturing, test, and supplier activities to meet program requirements and schedule. The role demands balancing performance with manufacturability, cost, and risk.

You will mentor teams, define verification plans, and drive technical decisions while ensuring hardware reliability and lean lead times in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, or related engineering discipline.
• 7+ years of full-cycle design engineering experience.
• Experience releasing production-intent drawings and models with GD&T and tolerance stack-up.
• Working knowledge of turbomachinery and high-speed rotating machinery.
• Ability to balance performance, manufacturability, cost, risk, and schedule.

Responsibilities

• Own new and existing turbomachinery hardware through development and production.
• Lead design, analysis, build, and test of turbomachinery for reactors.
• Translate system requirements into turbomachinery requirements and verification plans.
• Coordinate work across aerodynamics, mechanical design, structures, rotordynamics, bearings, thermal analysis, manufacturing, and test.
• Define development and test plans to retire high risks early.
• Work with external suppliers and Antares teams to deliver hardware on schedule.
• Investigate issues during manufacturing and test, identify root causes, implement corrective actions.
• Improve designs to increase reliability and reduce lead time.
• Lead design reviews and communicate status, risks, and decisions.

Skills

Full-cycle design engineering

Turbomachinery knowledge

GD&T & tolerance stack-up

Engineering tradeoffs

Problem solving

Cross-functional coordination

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical/Aerospace

Master’s degree (preferred)

Tools

NX

ANSYS Mechanical

ANSYS CFX

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 Energy.

About the Role
As a Responsible Engineer for Turbomachinery, you will be a key member of the Reactor Hardware Team. You will own turbomachinery hardware for Antares nuclear reactors from concept through development, qualification, and production. You will be responsible for the technical execution of the complete turbomachine, coordinating analysis, design, manufacturing, test, and supplier activities to deliver hardware that meets program requirements and schedule.

The ideal candidate has experience taking complex mechanical designs from concept to production. You should be comfortable making engineering decisions with incomplete information, balancing performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, risk, and schedule. You should be able to identify the work required to retire technical risk, delegate effectively to subject matter experts, and maintain ownership of the overall result.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Own new and existing turbomachinery hardware through development and production.

• Lead the design, analysis, build, and test of turbomachinery for Antares nuclear reactors.

• Translate system requirements into turbomachinery requirements, interfaces, and verification plans.

• Coordinate work across aerodynamics, mechanical design, structures, rotordynamics, bearings, thermal analysis, manufacturing, and test.

• Define development and test plans that retire the highest technical risks early.

• Work closely with external suppliers and Antares manufacturing, test, and quality engineers to deliver hardware on schedule.

• Investigate issues during manufacturing and test, identify root causes, and drive corrective actions to closure.

• Improve existing designs to increase reliability and manufacturability, reduce cost and lead time.

• Lead design reviews and communicate technical status, risks, and decisions to engineering and program leadership.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, or a related engineering discipline.

• 7+ years of full-cycle design engineering experience.

• Experience releasing production-intent mechanical drawings and models for fabrication, including GD&T and tolerance stack-up.

• Working knowledge of turbomachinery and high-speed rotating machinery.

• Experience making engineering tradeoffs involving performance, manufacturability, cost, risk, and schedule.

• Demonstrated ability to break down complex engineering problems, prioritize work, and drive technical issues to closure.

• Ability to coordinate and delegate technical work while maintaining ownership of the complete hardware.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Master’s degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, or a related engineering discipline.

• 8+ years of experience in design and ownership of turbomachinery.

• Experience serving as a responsible engineer, design owner, technical lead, or equivalent role for complex hardware.

• Experience working directly with suppliers and manufacturing teams to resolve design and production issues.

• Experience in a demanding, fast-paced development environment.

• Proficiency with NX for CAD design, drafting, and GD&T.

• Proficiency with ANSYS Mechanical and CFX.

Additional Requirements:

Flexibility to support hardware development milestones—including occasional weekend or long-hour pushes.

Salary Range:

Senior, Turbomachinery Engineer - $140,000 - $185,000

Staff, Turbomachinery Engineer - $155,000 - $220,000

Leveling is determined during the interviews and can change over time.

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 system

• Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle

• Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many, even experts, will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies, by definition, must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before, and never choose to do something because that's “how it's always been done”

• Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer, user, or stakeholder face to face, even if that means hopping on a plane. If you can’t make it, find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere, but we believe teams are built in person, and aim to maximize our time together

• Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption

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.