Environmental Lab Manager

The posting, as Antares wrote it

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 advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we’re 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 Team

We are looking for a hands-on Environmental Lab Manager to build and operate the environmental test capabilities supporting Antares’ R1 reactor and associated hardware. You will translate program needs into equipment and facility requirements, bring new capabilities online, and establish a practical path from test request to reliable results. You will work closely with Facilities, test teams, design engineering, and Quality to make the lab useful, safe, and ready for a growing hardware development program.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Build the environmental lab capability roadmap with test and design teams, identifying near-term needs, future capacity, and gaps best covered by external labs.
• Size and specify environmental chambers, electrodynamic shakers, and other test equipment based on hardware dimensions, mass, mounting, thermal loads, operating conditions, test profiles, and expected utilization.
• For chambers, evaluate usable volume, temperature and humidity ranges, ramp rates under load, feedthroughs, and heat removal. For shakers, evaluate payload and fixture mass, force, frequency, displacement, velocity, and control requirements.
• Work with Facilities to define and coordinate power, cooling water, ventilation, compressed air, floor loading, vibration isolation, rigging access, and equipment layout before installation.
• Own technical vendor evaluations and equipment acceptance requirements; coordinate procurement, installation, commissioning, and verification of usable test capability.
• Work with design engineering, test teams, and Quality to identify applicable test specifications and methods, tailor profiles to the intended environment, and document acceptance criteria and the basis for test severity.
• Establish procedures for test readiness, fixture and sensor checks, equipment operation, abort limits, data review, and test reporting. Keep documentation proportional to test risk and program needs.
• Coordinate and support hands-on test execution, including fixtures, instrumentation, data acquisition, and troubleshooting; maint

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• 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”
• 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 can’t 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.

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 https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987.