---
title: 'Systems Engineer at Helion'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/systems-engineer-helion-everett-en8hx2zfvxrn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-17'
---

# Systems Engineer at Helion

- **Company:** [Helion](https://feeny.ai/companies/helion)
- **Location:** Everett, WA
- **Compensation:** $165k–$200k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/helion/0d5e5fdc-876e-4a79-9861-63ececbf6a66

## Job description

## About Helion

We are a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, with the mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. Our vision is a world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone.

Since Helion's founding in 2013, we have raised $1.5 billion from long-time investors such as Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricorn Investment Group as well as new investors including Thrive Capital, LightSpeed Venture Capital, SoftBank, and others to propel us forward. Our current prototype, Polaris, has reached record-breaking plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (13 keV). Helion is continuing to iterate and on the path to the world's first fusion power plant, Orion.

This is a pivotal time to join Helion. You will tackle real-world challenges with a team that prizes urgency, rigor, ownership, and a commitment to delivering hard truths – values essential to achieving what no one has before. Together, we will change the future of energy, because the world can't wait.

## What You Will Be Doing

As a Systems Engineer, you will develop the system architecture and top-level requirements that hold Helion's fusion power plant together as a coherent whole — spanning the fusion machine, balance of plant, and the systems that connect them. You will work across electrical, mechanical, controls, plant, science, and business teams to decompose plant-level mission objectives into traceable subsystem requirements, drive the trade studies that shape major plant architecture decisions, and define the interfaces between subsystems and suppliers through rigorous ICDs. You will conduct technical reviews, develop verification planning against top-level plant requirements, and maintain clear traceability from plant-level objectives down through the requirements hierarchy to implemented hardware. You will drive technical consensus across functional teams and represent the plant's technical position in leadership and program-level reviews. This team is architecture- and requirements-focused, serving as the technical integration point across subsystem, science, and business teams at the plant level. You Will

- Develop and maintain Helion's top-level plant requirements, ensuring clear, traceable decomposition from plant-level mission objectives down to subsystem and component requirements.
- Utilize trade studies that inform major plant architecture decisions, presenting clear technical rationale to engineering leadership.
- Develop and maintain Interface Control Documents (ICDs) that define the electrical, mechanical, controls, and data interfaces between plant subsystems and with suppliers.
- Conduct and facilitate design reviews (PDR/CDR-style and informal) at the plant level, ensuring requirements, interfaces, and risks are surfaced and dispositioned early.
- Identify, assess, and track plant-level integration risks, and drive mitigation strategies and resolution across functional teams.
- Drive configuration management and change control for plant-level requirements and baselines, evaluating the cross-system impact of proposed design changes and recommending disposition.
- Partner with electrical, mechanical, controls, test, science, and business teams to ensure subsystem designs remain aligned with plant-level intent as designs mature.
- Drive technical consensus across functional teams on plant-level decisions, and represent the plant's technical position in program and leadership reviews.
- Scale Helion's systems engineering processes — requirements management, ICD control, and design review cadence — to meet the needs of an organization moving from prototype to production power plants.

Required Skills

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
- 3+ years of experience in systems engineering, with demonstrated ownership of requirements, architecture, or interface definition on complex plant or hardware systems.
- Proven experience decomposing high-level plant or mission requirements into traceable, verifiable subsystem requirements.
- Proven experience authoring and maintaining ICDs across multiple engineering disciplines.
- Experience developing and executing verification and validation plans against system-level requirements.
- Strong technical writing and communication skills, with the ability to influence design decisions across disciplines without direct authority.
- Demonstrated ability to drive technical consensus and decisions across cross-functional engineering teams.
- Comfort working across electrical, mechanical, controls, science, business, and software domains without being deeply expert in all of them.
- Demonstrated ability to operate in fast-paced development environments requiring both engineering rigor and speed.

Desired Skills

- Experience in aerospace, nuclear, energy systems, or other complex, safety-critical, first-of-kind hardware or plant programs.
- Experience with requirements management and PLM tooling (Jama, DOORS, Teamcenter, or similar).
- Experience with risk identification, tracking, and mitigation on complex engineering programs.
- Experience applying system safety and reliability methods, including FMEA, FMECA, or fault tree analysis.
- Track record of mentoring engineers toward stronger systems engineering practice.

#LI-Onsite

## #LI-KL1

## Benefits

Our total compensation package includes benefits, including but not limited to:

- Medical, Dental, and Vision plans for employees and their families
- 31 Days of PTO (21 vacation days and 10 sick days)
- 10 Paid holidays, plus company-wide winter break
- Up to 5% employer 401(k) match
- Short term disability, long term disability, and life insurance
- Paid parental leave and support (up to 16 weeks)
- Annual wellness stipend

Helion is an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the interview process, please let us know.

## About Helion

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Helion is building the world’s first fusion power plant to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable baseload electricity.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series G – $465M raised in 2026 at a $15.5B post-money valuation, led by Thrive Capital)
- **Headquarters**: Everett, Washington, USA (with additional facilities in Chelan County, WA)
- **Founded**: 2013
- **Founders**: David Kirtley (CEO), Anthony Pancotti, and others

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Fusion energy generation (clean energy / climate tech)
- **Target customers**: B2B – utilities, large-scale energy buyers (e.g., Microsoft, Nucor), and data center operators
- **Mission**: Build the world’s first fusion power generators to provide clean, reliable, and affordable electricity for everyone.

## Products & Services
- **Polaris**: The latest prototype fusion machine – a 19‑meter device with 50 MJ capacitor banks that demonstrated deuterium‑tritium fusion in early 2026. It is a pulsed, field‑reversed configuration (FRC) reactor designed to directly convert fusion energy into electricity (no steam turbine).
- **Orion**: The planned first commercial fusion power plant, targeting 50 MW of electricity to Microsoft data centers by 2029. Modular, factory‑built generators that can be shipped to customers.
- **HERCULES Program**: A $4M initiative funding 20 research institutions to develop enabling technologies for scaled fusion deployment.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $15.5 B (post‑money Series G, 2026)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $465 M (Series G) plus prior rounds (undisclosed total). Annual revenue not applicable (pre‑revenue).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sam Altman (early backer, recently stepped off board), Thrive Capital (lead Series G), Microsoft (first PPA for fusion energy), Nucor (500 MW development deal)
- **Growth Signals**: ~600 employees (up from 51‑200 in earlier years); Polaris achieved first privately‑developed DT fusion demonstration; signed first ever fusion power purchase agreement (Microsoft); expanding manufacturing capacity in Washington.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Direct energy conversion**: Helion’s pulsed FRC design recovers electricity directly from the expanding plasma at >95% efficiency, skipping the inefficient steam cycle used by most fusion concepts.
- **Pulsed approach**: The reactor pulses rapidly (sub‑second), producing fusion energy in bursts that can be synchronized to the grid, and uses solid‑state switches capable of hundreds of millions of pulses.
- **Simpler magnets**: FRC plasma is self‑confining, requiring fewer and lower‑field magnets than tokamaks or stellarators, reducing cost and complexity.
- **Fuel flexibility**: Uses deuterium and tritium (with tritium breeding planned) and ultimately can burn advanced fuels (D‑D, D‑He3) as the technology matures.

## Strategic Focus
- **Commercial deployment**: Delivering 50 MW to Microsoft by 2029 (Orion plant); scaling up manufacturing to produce modular generators in factories.
- **Technology maturation**: HERCULES program to solve tritium breeding, materials, and other enabling challenges; advancing Polaris toward net electricity generation.
- **Partnership growth**: Expanding power purchase agreements and development deals with industrial and tech customers to meet surging demand (especially AI data centers).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Urgency, rigor, ownership, and hard truths” – a mission‑driven environment focused on solving the hardest problems in fusion engineering.
- **Work**: Hands‑on with real hardware (capacitors, magnets, plasma diagnostics) across mechanical, electrical, and physics disciplines.
- **Location**: Based in the Pacific Northwest (Everett & Chelan County) with immediate access to skiing, hiking, and water sports.
- **Benefits**: Premier medical/vision/dental (fully employer‑paid options), HSA contributions, wellness stipend, 5% 401(k) match, stock options, up to 12 weeks paid parental leave + 4 weeks for birthing parents, 21 vacation days, 10 sick days, 11 holidays + winter break.
- **Hybrid/Remote**: Not explicitly stated; roles appear to be on‑site in Washington (given the hardware‑focused nature).
- **Open Roles**: Engineers (mechanical, electrical, simulation, controls), magnet analysts, experimental scientists, technicians, machinists – over 100 positions listed.

## Sources
1. [helionenergy.com](https://www.helionenergy.com/) – Company overview, funding, technology, updates
2. [helionenergy.com/careers](https://www.helionenergy.com/careers) – Careers page, values, benefits
3. [helionenergy.com/careers/open-positions](https://www.helionenergy.com/careers/open-positions) – Current job listings
4. [scientificamerican.com](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/helion-energy-is-building-a-fusion-power-plant-can-its-technology-deliver/) – In‑depth profile, 600 employees, Microsoft PPA, Polaris details
5. [indeed.com](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Helion-Energy?campaignid=mobvjcmp&from=mobviewjob&fromjk=9e3fd74c2e72805f&tk=1jrv4ci0di9cp800) – Company size, revenue, 108 jobs

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