Company Overview

Kairos Power is a new nuclear energy technology and engineering company whose mission is to enable the world’s transition to clean energy, with the ultimate goal to dramatically improve people’s quality of life while protecting the environment. This goal will be accomplished through the commercialization of the fluoride-salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (FHR) that can be deployed with robust safety, affordable costs, and flexible operation to accommodate the expansion of variable renewables.

Job Summary

The Nuclear Design and Methods department is seeking a highly accomplished Distinguished Engineer to bring deep nuclear plant experience and senior engineering judgment into the design organization.

This role sits at the intersection of nuclear analysis and plant implementation, helping ensure that Nuclear Design and Methods analyses, models, assumptions, limits, and requirements remain consistent with how the reactor will be designed, licensed, instrumented, tested, commissioned, maintained, and operated.

Reporting directly to the Head of Nuclear Design and Methods, the Distinguished Engineer will serve as a trusted senior technical advisor and representative for Nuclear Design in complex, high-impact decisions. The role will work extensively across Nuclear Island and Civil Structures Design, Systems Engineering, Operations, Licensing, I&C, and Nuclear Design functions including Source Term, Radiation Measurements, and Shielding. This individual will identify important technical and plant-interface issues early, lead their resolution across organizational boundaries, and represent Nuclear Design within delegated areas of technical authority.

Equally important, the Distinguished Engineer will strengthen the organization from within—mentoring and challenging engineers, transferring plant and field experience into the design organization, and helping develop technical leaders who can independently make strong cross-functional engineering decisions.

The ideal candidate brings a broad nuclear engineering career anchored in direct responsibility for an operating reactor or nuclear facility, combined with significant field and operational experience and strong knowledge of nuclear design, licensing bases, plant systems, instrumentation, startup and commissioning, procedures, maintenance, and the interfaces between analytical disciplines and plant implementation.

Responsibilities

Provide senior technical leadership and independent engineering judgment across Nuclear Design and Methods and its interfaces with plant design, licensing, testing, commissioning, maintenance, and reactor operation.
Represent Nuclear Design in high-impact technical decisions and forums, including design reviews, readiness reviews, audits, licensing engagements, and senior technical or executive discussions, exercising delegated technical authority and escalating significant design-basis decisions as appropriate.
Lead resolution of complex cross-disciplinary technical issues involving reactor physics, thermal hydraulics, nuclear instrumentation, radiation monitoring, source term, radiation shielding, criticality safety, fuel management, I&C, systems engineering, licensing, testing, commissioning, maintenance, and plant operation.
Bridge nuclear analyses and methods to plant implementation, ensuring that assumptions, limits, margins, uncertainties, and analytical requirements are consistently reflected in plant requirements, instrumentation, operating constraints, surveillance and testing, acceptance criteria, procedures, and maintainable designs.
Identify and drive early resolution of technical risks and inconsistencies affecting licensing, operability, instrumentation, testing, maintenance, commissioning, or plant design before they become late-stage constraints or require significant rework.
Prepare, review, and challenge key Nuclear Design technical products and plant-facing engineering documentation, including analyses, calculations, design requirements, specifications, design decision records, test plans, procedures, licensing-basis inputs, readiness documentation, and other high-impact technical products, with particular attention to assumptions, interfaces, margins, and plant consequences.