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Antares is building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors for terrestrial, underwater, and space applications, with a mission to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. The company has raised over $600M in venture capital and holds hundreds of millions in contracts with military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy. The team includes veterans from SpaceX, the White House, Pentagon, Department of Energy, MIT, and national laboratories.
As Staff/Principal Reliability Engineer, you will own quantitative reliability analysis for the Antares R1 microreactor. Key responsibilities include:
- Develop and maintain reactor and plant-level reliability, availability, and capacity factor models; establish reliability targets for systems, subsystems, and critical components based on plant capacity factor and regulatory/mission requirements.
- Translate top-level availability and capacity factor goals into measurable reliability requirements for mechanical, electrical, controls, thermal, and balance-of-plant systems.
- Develop reliability block diagrams, fault trees, failure mode analyses, and quantitative models to understand how component and subsystem failures affect overall reactor performance.
- Calculate and track key metrics: failure rates, MTBF, MTTR, availability, probability of mission success, component life, and expected contribution to reactor downtime.
- Identify highest-impact components and failure modes; lead focused improvement efforts to reduce risks.
- Work directly with mechanical, electrical, controls, manufacturing, test, and reactor systems engineers to develop reliability improvement plans.
- Evaluate design alternatives and architecture trades based on reliability, redundancy, maintainability, serviceability, and capacity factor impact.
- Perform sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to determine which assumptions and parameters most strongly influence predicted reactor availability.
- Develop reliability predictions using component test data, supplier data, industry databases, accelerated life testing, engineering analysis, and field experience.
- Establish statistically sound methods for converting development and qualification test results into reliability estimates and confidence bounds.
- Define reliability demonstration and qualification test strategies, including sample sizes, test durations, failure criteria, confidence levels, and statistical acceptance methods.
- Use operational, manufacturing, inspection, and test data to continuously update reliability models as the reactor design matures.
- Lead or support DFMEA, FMEA, FMECA, fault tree analysis, and structured failure-mode investigations across reactor systems.
- Partner with design teams early to identify single-point failures, wear-out mechanisms, common-cause vulnerabilities, inadequate redundancy, and difficult-to-maintain components.
- Evaluate component degradation and life-limiting mechanisms including fatigue, creep, wear, corrosion, thermal cycling, radiation exposure, electrical degradation, and environmental effects.
- Develop reliability growth plans for systems not initially meeting program targets; track progress toward demonstrated reliability objectives.
- Support decisions regarding redundancy, sparing, preventative maintenance, inspection intervals, replacement intervals, and repair strategies based on quantitative analysis.
- Work with operations and deployment teams to understand expected maintenance and repair activities and incorporate them into availability and capacity factor predictions.
- Establish reliability dashboards, metrics, and technical reviews for engineering leadership.
- Communicate reliability risks and recommendations clearly, including quantitative impact of proposed changes on overall reactor performance.
- Serve as technical authority for reliability engineering methods; help establish Antares' internal standards, tools, processes, and best practices.
- Drive a culture in which reliability is treated as a design requirement and continuously improved through analysis, testing, manufacturing data, and operational learning.
The role is based in Torrance, CA in a 145,000 sq ft facility featuring collaboration spaces, R&D, and production capabilities with easy freeway access.
REQUIREMENTS:
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, applied mathematics, physics, statistics, or related technical field
- 8+ years of experience performing reliability, root cause analysis, failure analysis, statistical analysis, or similar quantitative engineering work on complex hardware systems
- Working knowledge of statistics, probability, failure modes, and reliability engineering fundamentals
- Ability to understand mechanical and electrical systems well enough to evaluate likely failure mechanisms and reliability risks
- Ability to analyze technical data, develop quantitative conclusions, and communicate recommendations to engineering teams
Preferred Skills and Experience:
- Experience with reliability engineering in nuclear, aerospace, space, automotive, energy, defense, or other safety- or mission-critical hardware industries
- Experience with reliability block diagrams, fault trees, FMEA/FMECA, Weibull analysis, MTBF/MTTR, probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), availability modeling, or reliability growth methods
- Experience translating system-level availability or capacity factor targets into subsystem and component reliability requirements
- Experience with or understanding of risk-informed component classification and knowledge with 10CFR50.69
- Familiarity with mechanical and electrical design, manufacturing processes, qualification testing, material capabilities/limitations, and common hardware failure mechanisms
- Experience using test, field, or production data to estimate failure rates and update reliability predictions
- Experience driving design changes or reliability improvement plans based on quantitative reliability analysis
- Familiarity with statistical tools or programming languages and relevant libraries used for engineering analysis, such as Python, MATLAB, Octave, R, Minitab, SAS, NCSS, or similar
ITAR REQUIREMENT: Applicant must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
