Senior Test Engineer - Space

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 Role

As a Space Test Engineer on Antares' Mission Engineering team, you will develop and execute tests that demonstrate the performance and reliability of avionics, electrical subsystems, and thermal hardware for space nuclear power systems. You will own testing from requirements and test setup design through execution, data analysis, and reporting, with an emphasis on avionics verification, environmental qualification, and thermal performance. You will build test infrastructure and work closely with electrical, firmware, thermal, mechanical, and systems engineers to evaluate hardware under representative operating and environmental conditions. Your work will span bench testing, integrated system testing, and campaigns involving thermal vacuum, vibration, shock, and electromagnetic interference and compatibility. You will help identify failures early and turn test results into design improvements.

Responsibilities

• Develop verification plans for avionics, power electronics, sensors, and control systems; define test configurations, instrumentation, procedures, and pass/fail criteria tied to requirements.
• Design and execute avionics bench and integrated system tests covering electrical interfaces, command and telemetry, power sequencing, operating modes, fault detection, and recovery.
• Build automated test equipment and hardware-in-the-loop setups using programmable supplies, electronic loads, signal simulation, data acquisition, and flight-like hardware and software.
• Plan and execute environmental test campaigns, including thermal vacuum (TVAC), thermal cycling, vibration, shock, and electromagnetic interference and compatibility (EMI/EMC), working with external laboratories as needed.
• Verify electrical and functional performance before, during, and after environmental exposure; monitor telemetry and investigate intermittent faults, resets, and performance degradation.
• Develop thermal performance and thermal balance tests for avionics, power conversion equipment, and heat transport and rejection hardware; measure temperatures, heat loads

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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.