Back to jobs
New

Senior OT Data Engineer

Torrance, CA

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 Senior OT Data Engineer will own the operational data architecture connecting industrial sources, historians, time-series databases, semantic models, visualization, and controlled downstream consumers across Valar's reactor, fuel, and power-conversion programs. This is a hands-on role spanning software, databases, storage, networking, cybersecurity boundaries, and field commissioning. 

Your scope includes FactoryTalk Historian SE/AVEVA PI, InfluxDB/SQL, OPC UA/MQTT/APIs, ETL/data pipelines, semantic data models, Grafana, virtualized data services, RAID/ZFS storage, backup/recovery, high-rate time-series data, data quality/lineage, and controlled transfer through air-gapped/unidirectional boundaries to enterprise/cloud systems. 

You will work closely with the Senior SCADA Engineer, Senior OT Network Engineer, Senior OT Infrastructure Engineer, IC&E, Operations, Quality, and engineering users. The SCADA Engineer owns the FactoryTalk platform and operator-facing SCADA environment; you own cross-system data pipelines/models/storage/controlled egress. IC&E owns field instrumentation, PLC application programming, protection logic, and electrical/control hardware. Data systems must preserve source timestamps/quality and cannot interfere with control or credited safety functions. 
This role is shared across programs and requires frequent field work in Torrance and Orangeville. We expect candidates from power generation, oil & gas, process manufacturing, aerospace, industrial software, or other environments where data fidelity/availability/security matter. 

Key Responsibilities 

  • Own OT data architecture, standards, roadmaps, interfaces, naming/context, retention, and lifecycle across reactor, fuel, and power-conversion programs. 
  • Deploy/administer FactoryTalk Historian SE/AVEVA PI, InfluxDB, SQL, virtualized data services, and supporting storage/backup/recovery infrastructure. 
  • Build/operate OPC UA/MQTT/API/ETL ingestion pipelines that preserve source timestamps, values, units, quality, ordering, and traceability. 
  • Develop semantic data models/metadata/tag context/material genealogy interfaces that make operational data consistently usable across teams. 
  • Design/validate controlled data transfer across security zones, air gaps, and unidirectional data flows to enterprise/cloud/central monitoring systems. 
  • Engineer time-series retention/compression/query performance/replication/high availability/recovery and validate failure behavior. 
  • Build Grafana/query/analysis interfaces with engineers/operators while keeping data ownership/access boundaries explicit. 
  • Develop/deploy C#/PowerShell/CMD services/scripts for acquisition/transformation/validation/monitoring and maintain controlled source/configuration records. 
  • Monitor data quality/pipeline health/storage capacity/access/audit and perform authorized cybersecurity testing/remediation for data systems. 
  • Lead integration/commissioning/troubleshooting/vendor escalation/turnover and maintain current diagrams, data contracts, manuals, and runbooks. 

You Will Be Successful in This Role If 

  • You treat timestamps/quality/lineage/context as engineering data, not optional metadata. 
  • You can trace a bad value from the source interface through transport/transformation/storage/query/visualization and identify where it changed. 
  • You design data systems that remain decoupled from process control and cannot create a dependency on external/less-trusted systems. 
  • You can balance throughput/latency/retention/recovery/security without building unnecessary complexity. 
  • You test backup/restore/replay/failover/data-loss behavior and quantify limitations instead of assuming the platform is reliable. 
  • You create clear data contracts/models/diagrams/runbooks that other engineers can implement and operate. 
  • You take complete ownership before a mature data platform/team exists and can lead vendors without outsourcing technical judgment. 
  • You are willing to travel frequently and maintain a strong field presence during construction, commissioning, startup, outages, and incidents. 

Basical Qualifications 

  • Demonstrated ownership of industrial historian/time-series/data-integration systems in power generation, oil & gas, manufacturing, aerospace, or a similarly demanding environment. 
  • Direct experience administering FactoryTalk Historian SE and its AVEVA PI foundation, including points/interfaces/archives/collectives/backup/recovery/performance. 
  • Strong experience with InfluxDB/SQL or equivalent time-series/relational databases, including schema/retention/query/performance/backup/recovery. 
  • Experience building production OPC UA/MQTT/API/ETL pipelines with explicit timestamp/quality/error/retry/idempotency behavior. 
  • Experience developing semantic data models/metadata/tag context and Grafana or equivalent visualization/query interfaces. 
  • Experience with Proxmox or equivalent virtualization plus RAID/ZFS or equivalent storage, capacity planning, replication, backup/restore, and data recovery. 
  • Strong working knowledge of industrial networking, segmentation, air-gapped environments, unidirectional data flows, and controlled enterprise/cloud transfer. 
  • Ability to develop/deploy/maintain data services and automation using C#/PowerShell/CMD or equivalent tools. 
  • Strong technical writing/visualization/vendor-management/cybersecurity-testing skills and willingness to perform frequent field work in Orangeville. 
  • Formal degrees/certifications are not required. Equivalent technical experience is acceptable. 

Preferred Skills and Experience 

  • Experience with high-volume/high-rate operational data, historian collectives, distributed buffering, replay, and loss/duplicate detection. 
  • Experience in nuclear energy, power generation, oil & gas, chemical processing, advanced manufacturing, or other safety-conscious industries. 
  • Experience designing data-diode/unidirectional egress and centralized monitoring for multiple isolated facilities. 
  • Experience integrating SCADA/OT data with MES/LIMS/QMS while preserving system ownership, material genealogy, quality records, and security boundaries. 
  • Experience delivering first-of-a-kind data platforms for greenfield facilities through commissioning/operations. 

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

$170,000 - $210,000 USD

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...

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.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Valar Atomics’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.