Senior Mechanical Design Engineer Cover Gas Systems

About Us

At Antares our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. Were fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military solve the climate crisis elevate global living standards and expand humanitys presence in outer space. To achieve our mission were 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 and National Laboratories like Los Alamos Idaho and Oak Ridge. Antares has raised over $130M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $13M in government funding.

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 reactors 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:

• Bachelors 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 145000 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 documents set of valueshere 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 thats how its 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 cant 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

Engineer II Comp Range: $115K - $150K

Senior Engineer Comp Range: $140K - $185K

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.

Required Experience:

Senior IC