---
title: 'Director of Electrical - Power Distribution at Valar Atomics'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-electrical-power-distribution-valar-atomics-torrance-0vevj7caxtmr'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-30'
---

# Director of Electrical - Power Distribution at Valar Atomics

- **Company:** Valar Atomics
- **Location:** Torrance, CA
- **Compensation:** $225k–$290k
- **Posted:** 2026-10-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-30
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/valaratomics/jobs/4466555009

## Job description

## 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 Team

You will build and lead the Power Distribution engineering organization within Valar Atomics’ Instrumentation, Control & Electrical (IC&E) organization, supporting the gigasite program and the sites that follow it. Your team will span power system planning and studies, substation and transmission design, and protection and relaying. You will work alongside reactor, power conversion, automation and controls, OT, nuclear safety, construction, and customer engineering teams in a hands-on environment where power system design directly determines reactor safety, plant availability, and customer uptime. The team values technical depth, disciplined documentation, and a safety-first culture.

## The Role

Valar Atomics is seeking Directors of Electrical - Power Distribution to architect, engineer, and deliver the islanded power systems that carry electricity from hundreds of nuclear units per site to co-located customers. The role owns the electrical system from the generator terminals to the customer meter for microgrids scaling up to 20 GWe. That covers generator step-up transformers, collector and transmission systems, switchyards and substations, protection, and power system stability. There’s no utility grid behind these systems to absorb disturbances, so this role is responsible for making a fleet of reactors and large, dynamic customer loads behave as one stable, reliable power system.

## Key Responsibilities

- Build and lead an in-house Power Distribution engineering organization, including hiring, organizational design, technical standards, and development of power systems, substation, transmission, and protection engineers.
- Own the electrical architecture of islanded multi-gigawatt microgrids from generator terminals to customer meter, including voltage levels, topology, redundancy, and expansion strategy as reactor units and customer loads come online in phases.
- Engineer generator step-up transformers, medium-voltage collector systems, HV/EHV switchyards, on-site transmission, and customer-facing substations through conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design.
- Own power system studies, including load flow, short circuit, protective device coordination, arc flash (IEEE 1584), insulation coordination, harmonics, motor starting, and grounding (IEEE 80).
- Own grid stability for islanded operation, including transient and small-signal stability, frequency and voltage control, EMT studies, load rejection and large load-step response, unit trip and cascading-failure analysis, system restoration, and black start strategy.
- Own protection and relaying philosophy and design for generators, transformers, buses, lines, and feeders, including relay settings, coordination, special protection and load-shedding schemes, and protection testing and commissioning.
- Define and enforce power quality and reliability requirements at the customer interface, including availability targets, ride-through, voltage and frequency tolerances, harmonic limits, and the electrical portions of customer service agreements.
- Work with reactor and nuclear safety engineers on the interface between the microgrid and reactor auxiliary power, including loss-of-power transients, unit trip impacts, and the reliability of power to plant systems that are important to safety.
- Define functional requirements for generator controls, governors, excitation systems, and microgrid control and dispatch, and work with the automation and controls and OT teams that implement them.
- Coordinate with customer engineering teams on load characteristics, demand ramp rates, interconnection points, and phased load growth.
- Set the design basis and electrical equipment standards for repeatable deployment across sites, including standardized substation and switchyard designs that support rapid, serial construction.
- Develop equipment specifications and lead procurement strategy for long-lead power equipment, including large power transformers, HV breakers, GIS/AIS switchgear, and protective relaying; secure manufacturing capacity and manage supply chain risk.
- Support construction, testing, and energization, including commissioning plans, acceptance testing, and staged energization of a growing system.
- Own organizational budget, headcount plan, and engineering tools for the Power Distribution function.

## Basic Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a power systems focus.
- 15+ years of power systems engineering experience in utility, generation, transmission, or large industrial power systems, including 7+ years leading engineering teams.
- Deep expertise in power system analysis, including load flow, short circuit, protection coordination, and dynamic stability, with hands-on experience in tools such as ETAP, PSS/E, PSCAD, PowerFactory, or equivalent.
- Experience architecting and delivering HV/EHV substations, switchyards, and transmission or large collector systems from concept through energization.
- Strong command of protection and relaying philosophy, relay settings, and protection system design for generators, transformers, lines, and buses.
- Experience with large generation interconnection, generator controls, and frequency and voltage control behavior.
- Proven ability to build teams from the ground up, hire strong engineers, and deliver on aggressive schedules.

## Preferred Skills and Experience

- Professional Engineer (PE) license or eligibility.
- Experience designing islanded, weak-grid, or microgrid power systems, including low-inertia and high-load-step stability challenges.
- Experience serving large data center or other large dynamic loads, including power quality and ride-through requirements.
- Experience with EMT modeling of inverter-based resources or large power electronic loads.
- Experience with standardized, repeatable substation designs and serial deployment programs.
- Experience in startup or rapid-growth environments, ideally on the owner or developer side.

## 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 $225,000—$290,000 USD

## About Valar Atomics

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Valar Atomics is scaling nuclear energy through grid-independent, high-temperature gas reactors (HTGR) for hydrogen production, data center power, heavy industrial power, and clean hydrocarbon fuel synthesis.
- **Entity Type**: Private (total funding $494M–$600.5M, latest round Debt - II)
- **Headquarters**: El Segundo, California, United States (additional location in Orangeville, Utah)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Not publicly listed (key executives include President Muhammad Shahzad and CNO Mark Mitchell)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Nuclear energy / advanced nuclear reactor technology
- **Target customers**: Large-scale industrial users (hydrogen producers, data centers, heavy industry), grid-independent operations, and fuel synthesis plants (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission or purpose**: “Nuclear needs scale” – unlock economies of scale by building hundreds of reactors on Valar gigasites, divorcing industrial power from the traditional grid.

## Products & Services
- **[Ward 250 Reactor]**: A grid-independent HTGR using TRISO fuel, designed for high-volume, non-bespoke production. Achieved criticality in June 2026 under DOE’s pilot program. Product type: Hardware (nuclear reactor).
- **[Hydrogen Production]**: Reactors paired with a sulfur-iodine cycle process to produce cheap, abundant hydrogen. Product type: Industrial energy product.
- **[Data Center Power]**: Dedicated on-site nuclear power for AI data centers, targeting AI’s projected 200+ TWh additional demand by 2030. Product type: Service / infrastructure.
- **[Heavy Industrial Power]**: Grid-independent power for processes like green steel and bauxite electrolysis. Product type: Service / infrastructure.
- **[Clean Hydrocarbon Fuels]**: Combines cheap hydrogen with captured CO₂ via a modified Fischer-Tropsch process to create synthetic fuels. Product type: Fuel product.
- **[Modular Citadel Shielding]**: Pre-cast, self-tensioning shielding system for mass-manufactured reactor protection. Production line capable of 1,000+ blocks per year. Product type: Hardware component.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (CB Insights shows valuation as hidden)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding reported as $494M (LinkedIn) or $600.5M (CB Insights, conflicting reports); latest round debt financing in November 2025.
- **Notable Investors**: Palmer Luckey, Shyam Sankar, Day One Ventures, DTX Ventures, Contrary, Riot Ventures (led Seed), Snowpoint Ventures (led Series A), and 28+ others.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 74 employees (+232% YoY, +9.6% monthly); 30 active job postings; Ward 250 reactor achieved criticality in June 2026; partnerships with DOE, San Rafael Energy Research Center, and State of Utah; opened first nuclear site (San Rafael) in February 2026.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proven HTGR design** with unmatched safety profile and proliferation resistance when paired with TRISO fuel.
- **Grid-independent “gigasite” model** that avoids traditional grid constraints, enabling mass manufacturing of standardized reactors.
- **Vertical integration**: In-house design of reactors, fuel processing (sulfur-iodine cycle), and shielding systems (Modular Citadel).
- **Speed to market**: Ward 250 is on track for power operations before July 4, 2026, under a DOE mandate.
- **Talent base**: Attracts engineers from Ultra Safe Nuclear, X-energy, Anduril, and other advanced hardware companies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale manufacturing**: Transition from project-based nuclear to high-volume production through gigasites.
- **Achieve operational milestones**: Achieve hot criticality and power operation at Ward 250 by mid-2026.
- **Expand product lines**: Deliver grid-independent hydrogen, data center power, and synthetic fuels to meet industrial and AI energy demands.
- **Grow headcount rapidly**: Aggressively hiring in engineering, operations, quality, and technical roles.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven culture**: “Hardware is the only thing that counts” – emphasis on building real reactors, not just pitching.
- **High growth environment**: Company doubled headcount in the past year; roles offer significant ownership and impact.
- **Locations**: Hawthorne (CA), El Segundo (CA), Orangeville (UT), and Huntington (UT) – roles span design, manufacturing, and field operations.
- **Work style**: Likely on-site/hybrid for technical roles (e.g., Build Engineer, Nuclear Operations Manager, Machinist).
- **Perks & culture**: Rapid advancement opportunities, exposure to cutting-edge nuclear and chemical engineering, and a team with deep ties to defense and deep-tech.
- **Current openings**: 30+ roles including mechanical engineers, plant operators, quality engineers, finance systems engineers, and technical recruiters.

## Sources
1. [valaratomics.com](https://valaratomics.com/)
2. [Greenhouse careers](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/valaratomics)
3. [CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/valar-atomics)
4. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/valar-atomics)

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