Senior-Staff Embedded Software Engineer

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.

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

Antares is seeking a Senior or Staff Embedded Software Engineer to build the real-time software that operates and tests our first-of-a-kind microreactor hardware. This software sits between custom electronics and reactor control infrastructure translating sensor data commands timing requirements diagnostics and fault responses into reliable embedded behavior. Your primary focus will be end-to-end ownership of embedded software systems across the full software lifecycle. You will drive projects from conceptual design and requirements definition through technical design verification and validation planning implementation validation and integration operational readiness deployment and ongoing operations and maintenance.

You will partner with firmware engineers on board bring-up device drivers bootloaders and hardware integration. You will also work across electrical controls reactor software systems safety and test teams to turn evolving requirements into dependable testable software. You should be comfortable defining boundaries with hardware-facing software and supporting system-level debugging. This is a hands-on software role. You will write production C/C integrate hardware-facing components debug system-level issues participate in integration and qualification testing and provide technical guidance to other engineers.

Key Responsibilities

Own the full lifecycle of real-time embedded software projects for reactor and test

hardware defining the technical approach execution plan risks and verification

strategy.

Collaborate with electrical controls reactor software systems safety and test

teams to define and document software requirements resolve interfaces and risks

and translate system needs into software architecture and testable observable

behavior.

Define software boundaries and partition functionality among hardware-facing

components communication services interrupts real-time tasks state machines

control functions and application logic.

Integrate embedded software with custom electronics hardware interfaces and

control algorithms.

Analyze failure modes and implement predictable fault handling and recovery

behavior.

Support hardware integration qualification and reactor test campaigns including

cross-disciplinary debugging in the lab.

Develop and review software designs interface definitions test plans verification

procedures and release documentation.

Lead design and code reviews establish embedded software best practices and

mentor more junior engineers.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering Electrical

Engineering Software Engineering or a related technical field.

Experience working with microcontrollers bare-metal systems an RTOS or

similarly constrained real-time platforms.

Experience designing embedded software components interfaces state machines

and task structures with a strong understanding of interrupts scheduling

concurrency data ownership timing constraints and resource limitations.

Working knowledge of common embedded communication interfaces such as SPI

I2C UART CAN Ethernet or RS-485 sufficient to define hardware-facing interfaces

and support system integration.

Strong debugging skills across component and system boundaries using logs

traces source-level debuggers or other appropriate tools.

Experience developing testable embedded software and supporting unit

integration simulation or hardware-in-the-loop testing.

Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into clear technical designs and

communicate effectively across electrical controls software systems safety and

test teams.

Preferred Skills and Experience

Experience in regulated mission-critical or safety-critical industries such as

nuclear aerospace defense automotive industrial controls or medical devices.

Experience designing redundant or fault-tolerant systems including degraded

operating modes safe states fault containment and recovery.

Hands-on experience with board bring-up device-driver development

oscilloscopes logic analyzers or similar laboratory equipment.

Experience with bootloaders remote firmware updates rollback or recovery

mechanisms.

Experience developing or integrating automated software-in-the-loop hardware-in-

the-loop continuous integration or fault-injection systems.

Familiarity with configuration-controlled development requirements traceability

hazard analysis verification planning qualification or relevant safety-critical

development standards.

Location

• We are located in Torrance CA in a 322000 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 facility 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

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.

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:

Staff IC