Senior Mechanical Design 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 energy abundance and military strength are the keys to unlocking growth in the American standard of living. That’s why we’re building transportable microreactors for the modern warfighter. We can 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 military capabilities from fossil fuel supply chains.

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

About the Role

As a member of the engineering team, you will be Antares’ expert on mechanical design. You will work on all reactor, power conversion, and ground support equipment subsystems to ensure simplicity, manufacturability, and reliability in extreme maintenance-free environments. You will help develop and document our design best practices, requirements, and workflow. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of successful mass and form-efficient design, experience with exotic materials and superalloys, and will have at least a light background in structural analysis and test. Additionally, you will provide nuanced input into the system architecture trades and take a lead role in managing outsourced designs and commercial off the shelf parts.

Responsibilities

• Design state-of-the-art components, structures, and mechanisms for any and all subsystems

• Generate and maintain detailed drawings, component specifications, analysis and risk assessments.

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

• Define the standard process and workflow for rigorous part design

• Inform system-level architecture, with component capabilities and vulnerabilities in mind, to minimize overall unit cost

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline or physics

• 5+ years of experience designing and analyzing mechanical 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 mechanical or aerospace engineering.

• Experience designing, building, testing, and troubleshooting 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 fluid, gas, or high-voltage systems.

• 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 fluid systems and solid mechanics.

• Broad knowledge of materials science and material selections, especially for nuclear applications

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

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.”

• Craftsmanship - 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.