Stellarator Systems Architect

Job description

WHO WE ARE Proxima Fusion is Europe’s fastest-growing fusion company and the continent’s best-funded fusion player, as well as the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Backed by over €650M and powered by a growing team across Munich, Zurich, and Oxford, we are developing the hardware and infrastructure needed to deliver the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant. Our concept advances the most mature fusion technology out there, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, through two next-generation machines: Alpha and Stellaris. Our work combines stellarator optimization, advanced computation, machine learning, and high-temperature superconducting magnets to unlock higher-performance designs that were previously out of reach. Turning these designs into a functioning fusion power plant requires excellence and ownership across every discipline, from physics and engineering to software, manufacturing, law, and business functions. BY JOINING OUR TEAM YOU’LL GET TO - Shape the architecture of a fusion power plant – Own system-level decisions that determine how a first-of-a-kind energy technology is designed, integrated, and ultimately deployed at scale. - Solve some of the most complex engineering challenges – Work across tightly coupled disciplines (plasma physics, magnets, cryogenics, manufacturing, controls, and more) to resolve critical trade-offs and turn cutting-edge science into a functioning product. - Design real hardware with a pragmatic, fast-moving team from all over the world – Combine advanced simulation and systems thinking with a strong execution mindset, focusing on practical engineering solutions that accelerate the path to commercial fusion energy. YOUR IMPACT - Shape a first-of-a-kind machine: Alpha will be the first stellarator to achieve net energy, requiring a deeply coupled design where plasma, magnets, structures, cryogenics, and heating all work as one system, each pushed to the edge of what it can deliver alone. - Own the coherence of the design: As part of the integrated design team, you'll turn fast-moving engineering feedback into architecture decisions that improve performance, margin, and cost. - Be accountable for the outcome: You'll be responsible for whether Alpha's concept resolves into an elegant and efficient design. WHAT YOU WILL DO - Hold the whole machine in view. Keep Alpha converging on its top-level mission requirements while detailed decisions land at a fast pace. - Close the loop between architecture and engineering. Address feedback from the subsystem teams and detailed engineering design, and fold it back into the machine architecture fast, and with judgment about what actually moves the needle. - Hunt the uncertainties that drive the design. Identify the large model uncertainties baked into our design process, quantify them, and decide where to spend margin and where to reclaim it. - Find the levers. Use first-principles estimates and reduced models to locate the changes that cut cost or unlock performance, then scope them alongside the teams who'll build them. WHO YOU ARE - You've earned your judgment on complex machines. You hold a PhD or Master's in physics, engineering, or an adjacent field, and you have years of experience in industries where integration challenges are at the heart of the design, such as aerospace, semiconductors, or Formula 1. - Your view goes across physics. You're as comfortable reasoning about Lorentz forces on a coil as about microwave-plasma coupling, and you know when a back-of-envelope calculation beats a week of simulation. - You reach for whatever tool fits. Being a pen-and-paper calculation, a simulator you coded last night, or a commercial multiphysics package, the method serves the question, never the reverse. - You iterate to win. You treat fast iteration as the way real machines actually get designed, learning and incorporating feedback from every loop. - You make things land. Every study, tool, and memo you produce ends in an actionable insight and a clear next step, otherwise it didn't happen. - You build in code like an engineer, not a scripter. Git, CI/CD, and the PyData stack are comfortable tools for you. INTERVIEW PROCESS - Recruiter Interview (30-60 min) - Technical Screening (30 min) - Technical Panel (3x60 min) *This role sits at L3 of our framework, please inquire during the recruitment process for further information. At Proxima Fusion, our mission is bold: making limitless clean energy a reality. To get there, we need a high-performing, diverse team that brings different perspectives, challenges assumptions, and builds together with purpose. We know that diversity of thought and experience leads to better ideas, stronger execution, and a more resilient team. We don’t look at how you identify, what you look like, who you choose to worship or what ethnicity you are. We care about what you can bring to the table.