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Salary: USD 120,000 - 170,000 / annual
Oklo is seeking a Strike Engineer to join its engineering team and tackle the company's highest-priority, most ambiguous technical problems. This is a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Engineering Strike Team Lead.
The Strike Engineer is a highly adaptable engineer who moves between programs, builds context quickly, reduces problems to first principles, and stays accountable through verified resolution. Depending on need, the engineer may serve as a hands-on individual contributor, technical lead, or interim manager. The role involves establishing a durable execution path, helping staff the work, transferring ownership to the right long-term team, and then taking on the next priority.
Key responsibilities include:
- Embed in high-priority engineering programs and rapidly develop working understanding of systems, constraints, stakeholders, and failure modes
- Define problems from first principles by separating facts from assumptions, identifying governing physics and interfaces, and reducing uncertainty to testable questions
- Work hands-on across design, analysis, prototyping, testing, manufacturing, software, data, systems integration, and field execution as needed
- Establish practical execution plans with owners, decision points, schedule, risks, and objective completion criteria, then drive work through verified closure
- Diagnose technical and operational failures using data, experiments, direct observation, and disciplined root-cause analysis
- Make sound engineering tradeoffs under uncertainty while accounting for safety, regulatory requirements, quality, cost, schedule, operability, and manufacturability
- Temporarily lead projects or teams when needed by clarifying priorities, coordinating cross-functional work, removing blockers, and communicating decisions and risks
- Help recruit and onboard permanent owners, then transfer stable scope with clear documentation, open risks, decisions, and next steps
- Create reusable tools, processes, design standards, or technical documentation to prevent recurring problems or accelerate future work
Oklo is developing fast fission power plants to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy at scale; establishing a domestic supply chain for critical radioisotopes; and advancing nuclear fuel recycling. The company was the first to receive a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy for a commercial advanced fission plant and submitted the first custom combined license application for an advanced reactor to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Travel requirements: Remote employees must travel to Santa Clara headquarters twice per quarter for team meetings, off-sites, and company events. First two weeks of onboarding are required in-person at headquarters.
QUALIFICATIONS:
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 2+ years of experience solving complex engineering problems from definition through design, execution, validation, and handoff
- Technical breadth across multiple engineering domains and deep expertise in at least one area (mechanical, electrical, controls, software, systems, manufacturing, test, thermal-fluid, structural, or nuclear engineering)
- Demonstrated ability to reason from first principles, challenge unsupported assumptions, and validate conclusions with analysis, tests, or operating data
- Hands-on ability to use tools needed to move work forward (modeling, CAD, calculations, test equipment, scripting, data analysis, prototyping)
- Experience leading cross-functional technical work without formal authority, including stepping into temporary management responsibilities
- Strong written and verbal communication, including concise decision records, technical plans, risk summaries, and executive-level updates
Bonus Qualifications:
- Experience in nuclear industry, advanced reactor development, commercial power generation, national laboratories, or safety-critical energy environment
- Experience delivering hardware or integrated systems in regulated, high-consequence, or quality-controlled environment
- Experience starting new programs, recovering stalled projects, or resolving persistent technical or operational problems
- Experience with hardware-software integration, automation, controls, data systems, or test infrastructure
- Experience hiring, developing, or onboarding engineers and transferring work to durable long-term owners
