---
title: 'Director - Mechanical Engineering at Thea Energy'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-mechanical-engineering-thea-energy-kearny-ezgk1jbmzrty'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Director - Mechanical Engineering at Thea Energy

- **Company:** Thea Energy
- **Location:** Kearny, NJ
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-03-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/thea.energy/b5fb61a3-e32d-4cef-84f1-218a21d1a502

## Job description

About Thea Energy: Thea Energy is leveraging recent breakthroughs in stellarator physics and engineering to create a faster and simpler approach to commercializing fusion energy. The company is reinventing the stellarator using computer-controlled arrays of planar coils thereby replacing the intricate, complex modular magnets required in all other stellarator architectures. Thea Energy is on a mission to create a limitless source of zero emission energy for a sustainable future.

Position Overview: Thea Energy is looking for an experienced, highly motivated Director - Mechanical Engineering to join its rapidly growing team. You will have ownership of the mechanical design and development of primary and secondary components and subsystems in the development of Thea Energy’s integrated stellarator fusion systems. You will be responsible for structural and thermomechanical design, manufacturability, development, and commissioning of these components.

You will drive requirements definition, design trades, and integration across disciplines. You will build and lead an integrated team drawing from disciplines including mechanical design, structural and stress analysis, thermal/fluids analysis, materials engineering, manufacturing and fabrication engineering, nuclear engineering, and vacuum systems engineering.

The Thea Energy team is comprised of driven, creative, and fun individuals passionate about solving complex problems.

Key Responsibility Areas:

- Own the technical baseline for primary and secondary mechanical fusion systems, including requirements, design, development, analysis, verification, though manufacturing, commissioning, and operation.
- Drive system-level trades across relevant performance domains (e.g. thermal, structural, electromagnetic, nuclear, vacuum, cryogenic).
- Maintain accountability for the key performance metrics that define system success.
- Define and enforce interface controls.
- Work with core system-level development teams to define requirements.
- Lead system design and development, addressing the complex 3D non-axisymmetric geometry unique to stellarators.
- Drive disciplined design trades balancing performance, manufacturability, and schedule.
- Own the analysis campaigns required to demonstrate system feasibility and adequate margin under all operating conditions (normal operation, off-normal events, transients).
- Partner with manufacturing and fabrication engineering to ensure all components can be built, inspected, and assembled within realistic tolerances.
- Address stellarator-specific fabrication challenges driven by non-axisymmetric geometry and tight tolerance requirements.
- Own the assembly sequence and integration plan for systems within the overall machine build.
- Serve as the system-level integrator for system interfaces.
- Work with Systems Engineering & Configuration Management to define and maintain interface control documents, requirements flow down, and configuration baselines.
- Coordinate across engineering tools to establish CAD/CAE/PLM workflows and simulation infrastructure.
- Make scope and schedule trade-offs, escalating risks and decision points with clear technical rationale.
- Build, lead, and develop the integrated engineering team, spanning multiple disciplines.
- Define work packages, priorities, and deliverables across the team.
- Maintain technical risk registers and drive mitigation plans to closure.
- Build and maintain a technically rigorous team culture, setting expectations for analysis quality, design rigor, and documentation standards.

Ideal Experience & Skillsets:

- 15+ years of experience in mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, or a closely related field, with significant time spent on large-scale, high-performance hardware systems.
- Deep technical knowledge of at least two of the following: structural analysis, thermal-hydraulic analysis, vacuum system design, cryogenic engineering, nuclear engineering, high-heat-flux component design, manufacturing engineering.
- Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-disciplinary hardware development programs from concept through fabrication and test.
- Strong understanding of materials behavior and manufacturing processes for demanding mechanical systems.
- Proficiency with engineering tools: CAD (NX preferred), FEA (ANSYS preferred), and PLM systems.
- Bias toward ownership: you take accountability for outcomes, not just activities.
- Ability to make system-level decisions under uncertainty and defend them with engineering rationale.
- Effective at leading integrated, multi-disciplinary teams through clarity of scope and technical credibility.
- Comfort with ambiguity and pace of a startup building first-of-a-kind hardware.
- Strong written and verbal communication: you can present system status, risks, and trades to executives and to the engineering team with equal effectiveness.
- Track record of building and leading high-performing technical teams.
- Exceptional work ethic and a bias toward action.
- Innate desire to learn, innovate, and challenge assumptions, including your own.
- At least a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or related fields.

## #LI-RD1

Company Benefits:

- Salary range $175,000-$235,000
- Comprehensive health benefits (e.g. medical/dental/vision)
- Employee equity stock options
- 20 days PTO

It’s not necessary to meet all of the skillsets outlined above. Please feel free to send us a note and tell us why you would still be a great fit for this role or Thea Energy.

Diversity and Inclusion: Thea Energy is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a company of diverse backgrounds. By creating a diverse environment, we will bring new ideas and approaches to solving some of the world’s hardest (and most important) problems. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, family or marital status, age, disability, veteran’s status, or other characteristic protected by applicable laws and regulations.

## About Thea Energy

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Thea Energy is developing a simplified, economical stellarator fusion energy system using arrays of mass-manufacturable planar magnets and dynamic software controls.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup; founded in 2022)
- **Headquarters**: Kearny, New Jersey, USA
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Founded with technology developed at Princeton University (specific founder names not publicly listed on main site).

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Fusion Energy / Clean Energy / Climate Tech
- **Target customers**: Utilities, grid operators, industrial energy users, and governments seeking baseload, zero-emission power generation.
- **Mission**: "To create a limitless source of zero emission energy for the future of humanity." [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)

## Products & Services
- **Eos (Neutron Source Stellarator)**: A near-term commercial neutron source designed to achieve world-leading fusion performance and de-risk their first fusion power plant. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)
- **Helios (Fusion Power Plant)**: The company’s first planned full-scale fusion power plant, intended for commercial electricity generation. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)
- **Software-Defined Magnetics Platform**: The core technology differentiator—replacing complex, expensive 3D magnet coils with arrays of simpler, mass-manufacturable planar magnets controlled by a sophisticated software stack. This transfers hardware complexity into the digital realm. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Total Funding**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Private startup; notable for its technological breakthrough rather than public revenue. The company has active job postings (41 roles listed on Indeed) and is in a high-growth hiring phase. [indeed.com](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Thea-Energy/about)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Announced a collaboration with **NVIDIA**, **Synopsys Inc**, **Argonne National Laboratory**, and **Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)** to build the first digital twin of a stellarator fusion power plant using AI physics and engineering. [indeed.com](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Thea-Energy/about)
- **Growth Signals**: Rapidly growing team; active hiring across engineering, supply chain, finance, and marketing roles; partnership with major tech and national lab players; progression from a science project (Eos) toward a commercial power plant (Helios).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Planar Magnet Arrays**: Replaces the prohibitively complex and expensive 3D coils of traditional stellarators with simple, mass-manufacturable planar magnets. This radically reduces cost and manufacturing complexity. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)
- **Software-First Approach**: Transfers the geometric complexity from hardware to a dynamic software control system, leveraging decades of progress in computing and controls to simplify the physical build. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)
- **Stellarator Advantage**: The stellarator is the only magnetic confinement system that creates all required fields with superconducting coils, enabling steady-state operation (no plasma disruptions), which is a key advantage over tokamaks. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Commercialization of Eos**: Achieving near-term fusion performance and commercial operation with their neutron source stellarator.
- **De-risking Helios**: Using Eos as a stepping stone to validate technology and reduce risk for their first full-scale fusion power plant.
- **Digital Twin Development**: Leveraging AI and simulation (with NVIDIA, Synopsys, Argonne, PPPL) to accelerate design, operation, and optimization of their fusion systems.
- **Scaling the Organization**: Building out a multi-disciplinary team spanning fusion science, engineering, supply chain, and business functions.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven Work**: Opportunity to work on one of the biggest challenges facing humanity—creating limitless, zero-emission energy. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/careers/)
- **Culture**: Described as dynamic, flexible, and adaptive, balancing strong individual autonomy with a collective team spirit. Employees are empowered to take ownership of their career growth. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/careers/)
- **Diversity & Inclusion**: Explicitly committed to building a diverse workplace and encourages applications even if candidates don't meet every listed requirement. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/careers/)
- **Work Model**: Roles are listed as **On-site** in Kearny, NJ (for most technical and corporate roles) and some internships. [jobs.lever.co/thea.energy](https://jobs.lever.co/thea.energy)
- **Benefits**: Competitive salaries, health benefits (medical/dental/vision), employee equity, 20 days PTO, paid holidays and sick time, paid parental leave, 401k, life and disability insurance, and office perks. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/careers/)

## Sources
1. [thea.energy](https://thea.energy/)
2. [thea.energy/about-us](https://thea.energy/about-us/)
3. [thea.energy/careers](https://thea.energy/careers/)
4. [jobs.lever.co/thea.energy](https://jobs.lever.co/thea.energy)
5. [indeed.com](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Thea-Energy/about)

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