SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Valar Atomics is building advanced nuclear power systems to enable clean, scalable energy for industry and next-generation manufacturing. The company's mission is to make high-temperature nuclear power fast to deploy, factory-made, and practical for real-world applications. The Power Conversion team develops technologies that efficiently transform reactor-generated heat into electrical power, focusing on maximizing system performance, reliability, and commercial viability.
As a Cycle Performance Engineer, you will own the thermodynamic modeling and cycle performance analysis for the company's cutting-edge turbomachinery systems. You'll be an early hire in the turbomachinery function with direct influence over system architecture and design decisions.
Key responsibilities include:
- Develop and maintain comprehensive thermodynamic models of the power conversion system
- Aggregate, interpret, and integrate component performance data from turbomachinery, secondary flow, and heat exchanger teams into the overall cycle model
- Partner with cross-functional engineering teams to input component performance specifications into system-level models
- Define instrumentation and testing plans to calibrate cycle models against experimental results
- Evaluate system-level trade studies to optimize the cycle for business outcomes and operational efficiency
You'll thrive in this role if you're excited about being part of a complex turbomachinery product from inception, comfortable working in ambiguous environments without established design best practices, and interested in understanding turbomachinery design holistically across aerodynamics, structures, and manufacturing. This is an opportunity to shape the future of advanced nuclear power generation at a Series A company with significant industry impact.
