Senior Power Electronics Engineer

About Us

At Antares our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. Were fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military solve the climate crisis elevate global living standards and expand humanitys presence in outer space. To achieve our mission were building mass-producible inherently safe deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially underwater and in space.

Formed in 2023 the Antares team hails from SpaceX The White House MIT Rigetti Computing The Air Force General Atomics Relativity Space Ursa Major and National Laboratories like Los Alamos Idaho and Oak Ridge. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $13M in government funding.

About the Role

This role owns the high-power electrical architecture of the plant. At the center is the common DC bus that connects the battery energy storage system reactor power conversion system and grid-tied inverter through a network of DC/DC converters. As the technical owner of this system you will define its architecture establish its performance and fault-handling requirements lead supplier selection and validation and drive the roadmap for future power and deployment scaling.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Own the common DC bus: Define the architecture that interconnects energy storage the reactor power conversion system and the grid-tied inverter through DC/DC conversion voltage levels topology sectionalizing protection and coordination grounding and isolation scheme and the sizing margins behind all of it.

• Own the expansion architecture: Define how the DC bus scales from a single unit to a multi-reactor plant: paralleling strategy fault isolation between units protection selectivity as available fault current grows control hierarchy and what has to be designed in now versus deferred.

• Ensure the high voltage system integrates as a system: Verify that components from different vendors behave correctly together across the full range of reactor use cases and that the whole is stable where the parts are individually fine.

• Own HV system functions and their implementation: Battery management bus precharge isolation and insulation monitoring power quality grid-forming and grid-following operation controlled and emergency shutdown load shed black-start and failover communications from definition through implementation and verification.

• Own fault behavior across every case that matters: Load drop and rejection short circuit faults isolation and ground faults and converter faults: know what the system does prove it does that and make sure protection coordination and control response hold up under each one.

• Own the high power distribution test system at Antares HQ: Define and build the rig that lets us test at power. Work with facilities on the power infrastructure to feed it with the test team on the test cases and campaign and with the controls infrastructure team on data logging instrumentation and automation of repetitive test sequences.

• Turn test results into design decisions: Run the campaigns that matter close the loop on model correlation and feed what you learn back into architecture and supplier requirements.

• Own the power electronics supplier relationships: Energy storage systems DC/DC converters grid-tied inverters and AC/DC converters youre the technical owner of each: specification evaluation design review integration support issue escalation and the long-term relationship.

• Drive the electrical development roadmap: Evaluate suppliers and emerging technologies as we push toward higher power output and make the build-versus-buy and technology-selection calls that shape the next generation of the system.

• Shape the equipment pad layout: Work with harnessing and mechanical design engineers on physical arrangement optimizing cable and busbar routing for voltage drop loop inductance EMI thermal management serviceability and arc flash safety.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field

• 5 years in power electronics or high power electrical systems including ownership of a system architecture through hardware bring-up

• Direct experience with DC bus architectures interconnecting multiple sources and loads protection coordination grounding and isolation and fault current analysis

• Hands-on experience with grid-tied inverters DC/DC conversion and battery energy storage integration

• Experience with motor drive or generator inverter systems including motor generator units (MGUs) traction drives industrial motor drives or comparable high power inverter applications

• Experience with EMI/EMC testing at the product level

• Demonstrated experience specifying evaluating and managing power electronics suppliers rather than only designing in-house

• Demonstrated experience planning leading and executing high-power electrical test campaigns including safe operation and troubleshooting of energized high-voltage systems.

• Working knowledge of the codes and standards governing this equipment for example NEC Articles 706 and 705 NFPA 70E NFPA 855 UL 1741 UL 1973 UL 9540 IEEE 519 IEEE 1547 or IEC 62477

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience developing or deploying grid-forming control strategies (e.g. droop control virtual synchronous machines or equivalent) including black-start demonstration on hardware.

• Familiarity with IEEE 2800 and evolving interconnection requirements for inverter-based resources

• Experience scaling a power architecture across multiple paralleled units or a multi-unit site

• System modeling and study experience: PLECS PSCAD Simulink/Simscape ETAP SKM or EasyPower for short circuit arc flash coordination and stability studies

• Experience with EMI/EMC design for high-dv/dt power electronics including layout bonding and grounding filtering cable shielding and noise mitigation.

• Experience delivering equipment under a formal quality program (NQA-1 10 CFR 50 Appendix B AS9100 IEC 61508) or into a safety-related application

• Experience building test infrastructure from scratch including working with facilities on service upgrades and with controls teams on automated data acquisition

• Experience in another high power domain such as utility scale energy storage marine traction or aerospace electrification with expertise applicable to stationary power systems

Culture

At Antares we like to specifically tie each role to our founding documents set of valueshere are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful:

• Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities conflicting policies perverse incentives and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. If you want to be certain then you are apt to be obsolete. Over-optimizing the components often degrades the system

• Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle

• Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many even experts will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies by definition must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before and never choose to do something because thats how its always been done

• Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer user or stakeholder face to face even if that means hopping on a plane. If you cant make it find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere but we believe teams are built in person and aim to maximize our time together

• Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption

Equal Opportunity

Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit competence and qualifications without regard to race color religion gender national origin/ethnicity veteran status disability status age sexual orientation gender identity marital status mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (aka green card holder) (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. 1157 or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. 1158 or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Required Experience:

Senior IC