Senior Turbomachinery Engineer

About Us

At Antares, our mission is driven by the conviction that a new era of energy abundance is key to elevating global living standards and meeting the needs of Earth’s changing climate. We envision a future where affordable, reliable, and sustainable modern energy is as accessible in remote communities on Earth as it is in missions to the Asteroid Belt. To achieve that goal, Antares will become the de facto experts in nuclear microreactor development, test, and operation by making the world’s first mass-produced rapidly-deployable reactors. Antares is set to achieve timely certification and production scale by first partnering with the U.S. Department of Defense, where we can unlock unique capabilities not possible with current energy solutions, by untethering austere and contested locations from fossil fuel logistics.

Formed in 2023, the Antares founding team hails from SpaceX, The White House, MIT, Rigetti Computing, and The Air Force. To date, they have raised over $8M in capital from top-tier investors, including Caffeinated Capital and Susa Ventures.

About the Role

As a member of the R&D team, you will be Antares’ expert on turbomachinery. You will take ownership of the entire closed brayton power conversion system, performing detailed mechanical design, rotordynamic/structural analysis, and test. You will be directly responsible for ensuring multiple year system reliability and manufacturability. 

The ideal candidate will have experience with full system thermodynamic balances, CAD, the ANSYS suite, and fatigue/fracture analysis. Additionally they will have designed, instrumented, and conducted tests that validate their system.  

Responsibilities

• Design, analyze, build, and test turbopumps for the Antares reactors

• Own critical turbomachinery components and be responsible for every aspect of the turbomachinery design, demonstrate ownership and work in close collaboration with test, controls, and quality engineers

• Ensure that detailed mechanical analysis is performed on all the turbopump components/systems. Review drawings and make sure that selected designs meet the required standards for life and reliability targets

• Create test schematics and CAD models of proposed test setups/facilities

• Devise accurate and correct models, develop new methodologies and first principles-based tools to determine turbopump performance and operability

• Build test schedules and ensure alignment with relevant development and business needs

• Support both component and assembly testing. Be involved with defining the test configuration, the test process/execution and review the results to confirm

• Lead the resolution of issues encountered with the turbopump during development/qualification testing

• Support ongoing design improvements to turbopump assemblies and/or sub systems including manufacturing improvements to reduce cost and lead time of components

• Participate in root cause investigations that arise in test and field operation, implement corrective actions to prevent repeat failures

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline or physics

• 5+ years of experience in the design of turbomachinery

• Experience designing assemblies and test fixtures using CAD systems

• 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. 

Preferred Skills and Experience 

• Strong interpersonal and collaborative skills, enthusiasm for problem solving, and desire to optimize modern nuclear design and operation.

• 5+ years of professional experience in the mechanical or aerospace engineering fields.

• Demonstrable experience designing, building, testing and troubleshooting mechanical systems.

• Broad knowledge of instrumentation and sensors, with knowledge on tradeoffs and methods to integrate them reliably into designs / test setups

• Strong understanding of pump hydrodynamic/aerodynamic design and fundamentals of turbomachinery (mechanical design, and hands on experience with turbomachinery hardware build)

• Experience using LabVIEW, SIMULINK, or other test software 

• Demonstrated track record of high impact / ROI contributions 

• Strong project management skills and effective communication of technical concepts across multi-disciplinary teams.

• Hands-on experience with fluid, gas, or high voltage systems.

Additional Requirements

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

• Ability to lift 50 lbs unassisted; standing, climbing, bending, grasping, sitting, pulling, pushing, stooping, stretching, and carrying may be required to perform the functions of this position

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.