Build Quality Engineer

About Us

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.

Formed in 2023, the Antares team hails from SpaceX, The White House, MIT, Rigetti Computing, The Air Force, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, Ultra Safe Nuclear, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Antares has raised over $39M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $4M in government funding.

About the Team

The Quality Engineering team at Antares owns the quality of the product from design through operation and decommisioning. The team works closely with all cross functional organizations (Mission Engineering, Mechanical Design, Nuclear Licensing) to make sure that requirements are incorporated, validated, and verified throughout the design, build, and operation of the reactor.

We are seeking a passionate Build Quality & Reliability Engineer committed to turning engineering designs into reliable, high-quality products. This role focuses on developing and implementing rigorous quality processes that meet or exceed nuclear industry standards. The ideal candidate will leverage their manufacturing experience and analytical skills to ensure reliability throughout production, supply chain, and testing phases.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive quality processes, including production nonconformance management, calibrated hardware procedures, and certification processes for commercial materials in nuclear applications.

• Drive quality assurance within the supply chain, ensuring effective supplier qualification and ongoing performance monitoring.

• Lead or support root-cause investigations related to manufacturing, production, and testing issues, applying a strong first-principle problem-solving approach.

• Collaborate closely with engineering, production, and supply chain teams to proactively identify and mitigate quality risks.

• Ensure adherence to nuclear industry standards and regulatory requirements through effective quality management systems and continuous process improvement.

• Document quality procedures, processes, and findings clearly and comprehensively for internal and external stakeholders.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering

• 3+ years of experience in a manufacturing environment as a Manufacturing Engineer, Test Engineer, Reliability Engineer, or Quality Engineer.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Master's degree in Engineering.

• Experience within the nuclear industry or other highly regulated environments.

• Strong knowledge of quality management principles, practices, and industry-specific standards (preferably nuclear or similarly regulated industries).

• Proven experience in developing quality processes and managing production nonconformances.

• Familiarity with supplier qualification processes and supply chain quality management.

• Knowledge of calibrated hardware management and certification processes.

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with an emphasis on root-cause analysis and first-principle thinking.

• Effective communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work cross-functionally.

Additional Requirements:

• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones

• Ability to travel to customer and mission-relevant locations as needed

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”

• Craftsmen - We also focus on the inputs. We aspire to high-quality engineering for its own sake. As such, we invest in personal growth, learning, and developing a long-term career path for exceptional individual contributors. We embrace a beginner’s mindset, share knowledge, and never condescend the curious

• Loyally Collaborative - Team > Self. We win together. There is nothing more precious than a high-performing team

ITAR 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 .