Design Criteria Engineer

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.

Formed in 2023, the Antares team hails from SpaceX, The White House, MIT, Rigetti Computing, The Air Force, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, Ultra Safe Nuclear, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Antares has raised over $39M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $4M in government funding. 

About the Team

The Quality Engineering team at Antares owns the quality of the product from design through operation and decommisioning. The team works closely with all cross functional organizations (Mission Engineering, Mechanical Design, Nuclear Licensing) to make sure that requirements are incorporated, validated, and verified throughout the design, build, and operation of the reactor.

We are looking for a candidate who is excited about diving deep into the details of product designs and passionate about building processes to ensure that current and future designs and changes are robust, reliable, and positioned for success. The successful candidate will ensure products meet reliability, safety, and performance standards throughout their design lifecycle, from concept to production. This role is critical in identifying potential risks, improving product robustness, and enhancing overall customer satisfaction through reliable product performance.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Develop and manage requirements for all reactors based on customer specifications, safety regulations, and design and construction codes.

• Develop and implement processes for validating analysis methodologies.

• Review and develop guidance and requirements to ensure compliance with ASME and other applicable design codes.

• Establish and manage processes for design reviews, including documenting feedback, managing open actions, and tracking unverified assumptions.

• Conduct reliability analyses and risk assessments during product design and development phases.

• Collaborate with design engineers to incorporate reliability and quality considerations into new product designs.

• Identify failure modes and mechanisms, and drive root-cause analyses and corrective action plans.

• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including design, analysis, manufacturing, quality assurance, and others to establish scalable design processes.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, or related discipline).

• 3+ years of experience, preferably in a design or product development environment.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Master's degree in Engineering.

• Strong knowledge of reliability principles, methodologies, and testing techniques.

• Familiarity with ASME codes and standards.

• Familiarity with FMEA, FMECA, or other failure mode analysis tools.

• Proficiency in reliability software tools and statistical analysis packages (e.g., Weibull analysis, Minitab).

• Experience working within regulated industries (e.g., nuclear, automotive, aerospace, medical devices) is desirable.

• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.

• Ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical teams.

• Ability to obtain a Top Secret or Top Secret SCI clearance.

Additional Requirements: 

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

• Ability to travel to customer and mission-relevant locations as needed

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” 

• Craftsmen - We also focus on the inputs. We aspire to high-quality engineering for its own sake. As such, we invest in personal growth, learning, and developing a long-term career path for exceptional individual contributors. We embrace a beginner’s mindset, share knowledge, and never condescend the curious

• Loyally Collaborative - Team > Self. We win together. There is nothing more precious than a high-performing team

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.