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Xcimer Energy seeks a Director to build, grow, and lead the Integrated Target Design group. This role combines people leadership with deep technical authority in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and target physics.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and lead the Integrated Target Design team through recruiting, hiring, onboarding, managing, mentoring, and professional development.
- Convert program priorities into detailed work scopes, schedules, and task assignments.
- Evaluate near-term capability and resource needs; communicate staffing and toolchain requirements to program leadership.
- Ensure high-quality execution by removing obstacles and maintaining clear priorities.
- Provide day-to-day technical guidance in implosion physics, laser-plasma instabilities (LPI), symmetry control, and energy coupling strategies.
- Work with the Theory and Computation group to align modeling capabilities with design needs.
- Collaborate with the Diagnostic Physics Division (Imaging and Spectroscopy) to ensure researchers have diagnostic support and coordination for experiments.
- Participate as a technical authority in cross-functional discussions with laser engineering, target fabrication, chamber engineering, and diagnostics teams.
- Review and validate team outputs for technical quality and consistency.
- Contribute to technical collaborations with national labs, universities, external vendors, and testing facilities.
- Establish department-wide practices, documentation standards, review processes, and quality control appropriate for industrial fusion systems.
- Uphold Xcimer's cultural values: humble ambition, accountable trust, respectful critique, and rigorous urgency.
Success is measured by: a high-performing Integrated Design team with strong collaborations and clear priorities; high-quality outputs delivered on schedule aligned with program goals; strong integration of target physics and implosion design into experimental platforms; effective recruiting and mentoring; and consistent delivery of work scopes tied to physics risks and their resolution.
Requirements:
- Ph.D. in Physics, Engineering, or a related technical field, with knowledge of ICF.
- Demonstrated ability to lead and develop scientific or technical teams.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including ability to convey complex arguments to diverse staff in a matrixed organization.
- Ability to manage execution in a fast-moving, interdisciplinary environment with evolving priorities.
- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted as a refugee or granted asylum.
Desired Qualifications:
- Deep expertise in inertial confinement fusion, capsule and hohlraum design, laser-plasma instabilities, hydrodynamics, or related field.
- Familiarity with radiation-hydrodynamic modeling workflows, physics validation methods, and developing or supporting experimental platforms at HED facilities (NIF, OMEGA, Z, or similar).
- Experience in multi-institutional experimental collaborations.
- Familiarity with IFE topics including target fabrication, DT filling, cryogenic handling, and/or target injection and delivery.
