About Us

At Antares, we’re fueled by the belief that energy abundance and military strength are the keys to unlocking growth in the American standard of living. Antares is building mass producible nuclear energy, with a path to achieve scale by starting with the U.S. Military as their first adopter. We solve the energy constraints of contested logistics by developing inherently safe, rapidly deployable nuclear microreactors that can be operated terrestrially or in space, thus untethering from fossil fuel supply chains and creating energy abundance for our nation's military. Our long term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt.

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

About the Role

As the founding member of the Controls Engineering team, you will be Antares’ expert on control systems. You will work on designing and building the systems that operate, regulate, and report the telemetry of our microreactor. You will help develop and document our system architecture, requirements, control algorithms, and mechanisms. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of full-stack sensor and control projects and will have at least a light background in robotics. Additionally, you will provide nuanced input into the system architecture trades and take a lead role in managing vendor relationships and our test program.

Responsibilities

• Architect the reactivity control and safety systems, including building first control algorithms and actuators.

• Generate and maintain detailed documentation of systems configuration and embedded systems code base

• Plan and define test methods for building prototype systems and demonstration units

• Define the standard process and workflow for rigorous code review

• Develop models and analysis tools to provide detailed quantitative understanding of reactor behavior

• Support development and validation of system requirements

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline or physics

• 5+ years of experience designing and analyzing embedded systems via professional work experience, project/research-based student experience, or a combination of both.

Preferred Skills and Experience

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

• Master's degree or 5+ years of professional experience in electrical or computer engineering.

• Experience designing, building, testing, and troubleshooting electro-mechanical systems.

• 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 electro-mechanical devices, actuators, motors, valves, regulators, or other fluid and position control devices.

• Experience developing SW for embedded systems in languages such as Python and C++.

• Leadership experience on a project or research team.

• Experience using test instrumentation and control components (e.g. pressure transducers, thermocouples, strain gages, relays, solenoid valves, etc.).

• Knowledge of electro-mechanical devices, actuators, motors, valves, regulators, or other fluid and position control devices.

• Understanding of fundamental principles in control theory and control algorithms

• Developed, debugged, and deployed software that has been used in real-world applications/projects

Additional Requirements

• Based in or ability to relocate to Los Angeles to work in person at our Redondo Beach office

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

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.