---
title: 'Lead OT Engineer – Fuel at Valar Atomics'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-ot-engineer-fuel-valar-atomics-torrance-california-v0dka93k53w0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Lead OT Engineer – Fuel at Valar Atomics

- **Company:** Valar Atomics
- **Location:** Torrance California, United States
- **Compensation:** $200k–$275k
- **Posted:** 2026-07-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/valaratomics/jobs/4341243009

## 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

As part of the Engineering organization, Instrumentations & Controls designs the systems that monitor, automate, and protect Valar's facilities and reactor technologies. The team develops reliable control architectures that enable safe and efficient operations.

## 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 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

## 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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