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Lead OT Engineer – Fuel

Hawthorne

About Valar Atomics

At Valar Atomics, we're redefining what's possible in energy. Our mission is to make clean, high-temperature nuclear power scalable—unlocking abundant energy for industry, hydrogen, and next-generation manufacturing. We are a team of builders, engineers, and operators who believe nuclear energy should be fast to deploy, factory-made, and built for the real world. Our first pilot plant in Orangeville, Utah will demonstrate how advanced nuclear systems and fuel fabrication can power the future. Joining Valar Atomics means becoming part of a company where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level.

The Role 

Valar Atomics is developing high temperature gas cooled small modular reactors from first principles spanning early R&D through licensing, construction, and commissioning. The Lead OT engineer for fuel will own the SCADA/OT function supporting the reactor and its shared balance-of-plant interfaces. This role sits at the intersection of deep engineering and program leadership: you will build and lead the fuel labs OT team while remaining a hands-on technical authority shaping design decisions, safety system philosophy, and regulatory strategy. 

This scope includes industrial networking, compute/virtualization, storage, identity/access management, engineering workstations, HMI infrastructure, historians, operational data systems, cybersecurity boundaries, server room design, and the software/licensing required to keep these systems available, reliable, maintainable, and secure. 

You will work closely with IC&E, Operations, Mechanical Engineering, Health Physics, Construction, Quality, and the broader SCADA & OT organization. The OT team owns the communications, infrastructure, software, data, identity, and cybersecurity environment required to engineer, operate, monitor, and maintain those systems. IC&E owns field instrumentation, PLC application programming, protection logic, and electrical/control hardware.  
We expect most candidates to come from oil & gas, power generation, or advanced industrial sectors. Nuclear experience is valued but not required; what matters is your ability to apply rigorous engineering discipline to first-of-a-kind systems and grow into the nuclear regulatory environment with us. 

Key Responsibilities 

  • Own the fuel lab OT strategy, architecture, roadmap, schedule, and delivery from design through commissioning/operations. 
  • Build, hire, lead, and grow a multidisciplinary OT engineering team capable of supporting multiple reactor programs. 
  • Establish technical requirements, system boundaries, design standards, interface definitions, and acceptance criteria across infrastructure/networking/SCADA/data/cybersecurity. 
  • Maintain technical authority over reactor SCADA/OT while remaining hands-on during early design, integration, troubleshooting, and commissioning. 
  • Lead design reviews, procurement, vendor selection, integration, verification/validation, commissioning, turnover, and operational readiness. 
  • Own technical interfaces with IC&E/Operations/Mechanical Engineering/Health Physics/Construction/Quality. 
  • Define configuration management, change control, documentation, cybersecurity, recovery, and lifecycle practices for reactor SCADA/OT systems. 
  • Manage vendors/contractors/systems integrators, including scopes of work, technical deliverables, schedules, acceptance criteria, and escalation. 
  • Communicate technical status, staffing needs, program risks, and required decisions clearly to engineering/company leadership. 

You Will Be Successful in This Role If 

  • You take complete ownership of broad technical scope and can deliver before a large team or mature organization exists. 
  • You can move between organizational leadership, system architecture, design review, field execution, and hands-on troubleshooting. 
  • You know how to hire strong engineers, define clear ownership, develop technical leaders, and scale a team without creating unnecessary bureaucracy. 
  • You can distinguish between work that must be performed internally and work that can be delegated to vendors/contractors. 
  • You make practical engineering decisions under ambiguity without compromising safety, reliability, or configuration control. 
  • You create clear requirements, diagrams, procedures, and technical direction that engineers/vendors can execute against. 
  • You are comfortable working in a fast-moving, first-of-a-kind environment with changing priorities and aggressive schedules. 
  • You are willing to maintain a strong field presence during construction, commissioning, startup, outages, and incident response. 

Basic Qualifications 

  • Demonstrated ownership of OT or industrial control infrastructure for a complex industrial, power-generation, manufacturing, chemical-processing, or similarly demanding facility. 
  • Experience hiring/managing/developing engineers and building a technical team or function. 
  • Strong working knowledge of industrial networking, compute/virtualization, storage, identity/PKI, historians/data systems, OT cybersecurity, and server room infrastructure. 
  • Experience leading systems through requirements/design/procurement/integration/commissioning/operations. 
  • Ability to review multidisciplinary engineering work, identify material technical risks, and make defensible architecture decisions. 
  • Experience translating technical/regulatory/quality/cybersecurity requirements into designs, acceptance criteria, and verification plans. 
  • Experience managing vendors/contractors/systems integrators and holding them accountable for technical quality/schedule/delivery. 
  • Strong technical writing/visualization skills, including requirements, architecture diagrams, design narratives, procedures, and executive-level communication. 
  • Formal degrees/certifications are not required. Equivalent technical experience is acceptable. 

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Experience in nuclear energy, conventional power generation, oil & gas, chemical processing, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, or other safety-critical industries. 
  • Experience delivering first-of-a-kind facilities, pilot plants, greenfield industrial sites, or major capital projects. 
  • Experience with Proxmox/Arista/Palo Alto/AVEVA PI/InfluxDB/SQL/Grafana/OPC UA or equivalent technologies. 
  • Experience with air-gapped environments, network segmentation, unidirectional data flows, and OT cybersecurity testing. 
  • Experience building an engineering organization from an initial hands-on leadership role into a larger multidisciplinary team. 
  • Direct experience with Rockwell FactoryTalk, including FactoryTalk View SE/Linx/Historian SE/AssetCentre. 

What We Offer  

  • Competitive base salary 
  • Equity ownership in a rapidly growing advanced energy company 
  • Comprehensive medical benefits 
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Free daily lunch and dinner provided onsite 
  • Generous PPE stipend
  • High-impact startup environment with significant ownership and autonomy 
  • Opportunities for rapid career growth and internal advancement 
  • Direct collaboration with experienced operators, engineers, and industry leaders 
  • The opportunity to help build and scale transformative energy technology from the ground up

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Valar Atomics is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.

We are committed to providing a workplace free of discrimination and harassment and will provide reasonable accommodation as required by law.

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States as a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident (green card holder).

Salary

$200,000 - $275,000 USD

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