Nuclear Instrumentation & Controls Engineer

Employer 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

Antares is seeking a Nuclear Instrumentation & Controls Engineer to support the development, integration, testing, and qualification of nuclear measurement systems and reactor instrumentation across our reactor programs. This engineer will be responsible for designing and operating test platforms, developing automated testing capabilities, and executing instrumentation selection, verification, and qualification campaigns.

The role will support neutron detectors, nuclear measurement electronics, thermal sensors, and other reactor instrumentation operating in demanding nuclear and environmental conditions. This position will expand our engineering capacity to enable concurrent terrestrial and space reactor development, supporting Antares’ mission to deliver reliable nuclear power to mission-critical applications.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Collaborate with Nuclear, Mechanical, Electrical, Software, and Controls engineering teams to develop, integrate, and qualify nuclear instrumentation and control systems.

Design, build, and operate hardware-in-the-loop test platforms and automated test stands for nuclear measurement systems, sensors, and associated electronics.

Develop and execute test plans for neutron detectors, nuclear measurement electronics, thermocouples, resistance temperature detectors, pressure transducers, and other reactor instrumentation.

Perform sensor characterization, calibration, and performance testing, including measurement accuracy, response time, signal integrity, stability, and long-term drift.

Design and execute environmental qualification testing involving radiation sources, thermal chambers, thermal vacuum, vibration, shock, and other representative operating conditions.

Develop and maintain automated test software interfacing with data acquisition systems, instrumentation, and commercial or custom control and data handling hardware.

Translate engineering requirements into test objectives, acceptance criteria, procedures, and verification activities for individual components and integrated instrumentation systems.

Analyze test data, investigate anomalies, correlate experimental results with analytical models, and document findings in technical reports supporting design verification and hardware qualification.

Support instrumentation architecture development, component and vendor selection, technical design reviews, and definition of representative nuclear and environmental test conditions.

Basic Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Systems Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

4+ years of experience developing, integrating, or testing instrumentation and control systems in nuclear, aerospace, defense, or other high-reliability applications.

Hands-on experience with sensors, measurement electronics, calibration, data acquisition systems, and automated instrumentation testing.

Proficiency in Python programming for automated test execution, data acquisition, and analysis.

Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to write clear test plans, procedures, and reports, communicate findings to multidisciplinary engineering teams, and provide technical training.

Ability to operate in a dynamic startup environment with high ownership and hands-on execution.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

Experience with neutron detectors, nuclear measurement systems, radiation-source testing, neutron detector calibration, or nuclear reactor operations.

Experience designing and operating environmental test equipment, including thermal chambers, vacuum systems, vibration tables, shock fixtures, and radiation test facilities.

Experience with spaceflight hardware qualification, radiation effects on electronics, or environmental testing for aerospace applications.

Experience developing test systems using National Instruments, LabJack, or similar data acquisition hardware, including serial and Ethernet interfaces, C/C++, or programmable logic controllers.

Experience developing human-machine interfaces for reactor operations, integrating instrumentation with reactor control systems, or verifying coupled sensor-electronics systems.

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. Employees are required to work in-office 5 days/week.

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 RequirementsTo 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.