Manufacturing Engineer At Antares, our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. We're fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we're building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially, underwater, and in space. The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy. We are looking for a Manufacturing Engineer to take lead on the assembly of our full scale, full power reactor on-site at Antares Prime. This person would work with design, quality, supply chain, and many other teams to provide DFM to design, define build processes, procure capital equipment and tooling, execute development builds, and ultimately launch production of the R1 nuclear reactor.
Role & Responsibilities:
Own manufacturing process development for major reactor assemblies and subsystems from engineering release through build, inspection, test, and final integration.
Develop detailed assembly and manufacturing process flows, including shop floor layouts.
Partner closely with mechanical, electrical, nuclear, systems, materials, quality, and test engineers to ensure designs are manufacturable, inspectable, and testable.
Develop and mature tooling, fixtures, handling equipment, and specialized manufacturing equipment required to build reactor hardware.
Establish robust processes for first-of-a-kind hardware, balancing immediate prototype needs with the long-term requirements of a scalable production system.
Work directly with manufacturing technicians and operators on the floor to troubleshoot build issues, improve processes, and incorporate lessons learned.
Develop and maintain manufacturing bills of material (mBOMs), process plans, and configuration-controlled manufacturing documentation.
Participate in manufacturing readiness reviews, design reviews, production readiness reviews, and hardware build reviews.
Mentor junior and mid-level manufacturing engineers and help establish a culture of technical rigor, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Basic Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, Industrial, Aerospace, Nuclear, or a related engineering discipline.2+ years of experience developing and implementing manufacturing processes for complex hardware.
Demonstrated experience taking hardware from engineering design through prototype, development, qualification, and production.
Extensive experience creating manufacturing documentation, including work instructions, process specifications, assembly procedures, inspection plans, and test procedures.
Strong understanding of GD&T, tolerance analysis, engineering drawings, and configuration management.
Experience working directly with technicians, machinists, fabricators, inspectors, and production personnel.
Proven ability to troubleshoot manufacturing problems on the floor and drive issues through root cause, corrective action, and process improvement.
Strong understanding of DFM/DFA principles and the ability to effectively influence design decisions.
Experience developing or implementing manufacturing tooling, fixtures, and specialized equipment.
Ability to work effectively across engineering, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, test, and operations organizations.
Strong technical communication skills and the ability to clearly document complex processes.
Ability to operate independently in a fast-paced, highly technical, and ambiguous environment, while maintaining exceptional attention to detail.
Demonstrated ownership of large, technically complex projects with significant cross-functional impact.
Preferred Skills & Experience:
5+ years of experience developing and implementing manufacturing processes for complex hardware.
Experience with aerospace or nuclear reactor components, pressure vessels, primary/secondary systems, fuel systems, thermal systems, or reactor instrumentation and controls.
Experience developing manufacturing processes subject to nuclear quality assurance requirements or other rigorous quality/regulatory frameworks.
Working knowledge of ASME Section III, NQA-1, or comparable nuclear quality requirements.
Experience with process qualification and validation for special processes.
Experience with PFMEA, process capability studies, statistical process control, value-stream mapping, and capacity analysis.
Experience developing manufacturing processes for safety-significant or safety-critical hardware.
Experience transitioning low-volume prototype hardware into repeatable production.
Familiarity with manufacturing execution systems, ERP/MRP systems, PLM systems, and digital work-instruction platforms.
Experience working in an environment where configuration control, traceability, material control, and process documentation are critical to product acceptance.
Culture:
At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document's set of values–here 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 that's "how it's 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 can't 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 assumptionITAR Requirements
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.
