Thermo-Mechanical Engineer II

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 the Thermal-Mechanical Engineer for Integration of the Power Conversion System (PCS), you will own how heat moves through the Power Conversion System, including the thermal budget and its impact on hardware over time. Your scope runs from the thermal energy budget of the whole system down to the insulation on a single hot-section joint. You will develop the heat rejection and cold-sink architecture that closes the cycle, size and integrate the recuperator, define the thermal configuration of the hot section (insulation, heat-loss budget, surface temperatures, and personnel protection), and hold the thermal interfaces and transient requirements against the major PCS components, the reactor, and the safety systems. You are responsible for managing temperature-related life-limited hardware including mitigations, inspection procedures and processes, and a maintenance plan that manages that risk. You will participate in testing and data reviews for test rigs, full-scale hardware, and deployed reactors. You will drive instrumentation placement, correlate your models against what the PCS actually does, and take the delta back into the design.

The ideal candidate is fluent in heat transfer across conduction, convection, and radiation, has sized real thermal hardware rather than only analyzed it, and is comfortable owning the heat-loss budget and the cold-sink margin and working with component owners to ensure thermal performance is met. Experience with high-temperature power cycles, creep and thermal-mechanical fatigue life, or bringing first-of-a-kind hardware through thermal commissioning is a strong differentiator.

Key Responsibilities

• Own thermal management and thermal energy budget of the Power Conversion System and close the loop with cycle performance on parasitic losses.
• Develop the heat rejection and cold-sink architecture, sizing and integrating the recuperator and heat rejection against site and ambient conditions.
• Define the thermal configuration including insulation selection and design, heat-loss budget, surface temperatures,

[…]

• 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.