Senior Mechanical Design Engineer - Cover Gas Systems

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 the Responsible Engineer (RE) for the Cover Gas System, you will lead the design, development, testing, and validation of mechanical systems that monitor fission products released from nuclear fuel and maintain an inert reactor core environment. You will own the mechanical architecture of the system, sizing and integrating components that interface with electrical and software subsystems, and collaborating closely across disciplines to define requirements, documentation, and verification plans. The ideal candidate has a strong background in fluid system design, particularly involving compressible flow, and experience developing hardware for demanding environments. Familiarity with radiation detection technologies (e.g., scintillators, Geiger-Müller counters, or solid-state detectors) is a strong differentiator. Roles and Responsibilities: - Design, build, and test the reactor’s cover gas system, hardware, assemblies and detectors. - Concept and develop custom fluid-dynamic features to support fission product detection and inert environment retention. - Define design criteria, requirements, system architecture, and verification/validation test plans. - Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams across thermal, structural, neutronics, controls, and simulation disciplines. - Engineer components for high-temperature, high-stress, and radiation environments using metals, ceramics, and other advanced materials. - Perform design-for-manufacturability (DFM) assessments and execute tradeoffs across performance, cost, schedule, and risk. - Document technical decisions and tradeoffs, and present recommendations to senior leadership. Basic Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree in engineering - 5+ years of experience in full-cycle design engineering roles, including hands-on CAD, analysis, build, and test - Experience designing, sizing, and integrating fluid systems, preferably involving compressible flow - Experience performing and interpreting computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses. Preferred Skills & Experience: - Experience in the Nuclear, Aerospace, or Oil and Gas industries - Experience in a demanding fast-paced development environment - Experience with design engineering tools such as NX, ANSYS or Femap, and other product lifecycle software - Experience with engineering scripting languages such as Python and MATLAB - Experience working with radiation detectors Additional Requirements: - Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones Location - The Antares HQ is 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 HQ 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 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 https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987.