Lead OT Engineer - Fuel

About the role

The team builds and leads the fuel lab OT function for a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor program. This role combines hands-on engineering with program leadership for SCADA and OT systems. You will own the end-to-end lifecycle of industrial control infrastructure critical to fuel fabrication and laboratory operations. The position requires equal parts technical depth and the ability to lead multidisciplinary engineering teams through complex deployments. You will translate stringent nuclear safety and cybersecurity requirements into resilient OT architectures and verifiable acceptance criteria. Success in this role depends on your capacity to communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both engineers and executive stakeholders. You will mentor engineers while maintaining hands-on involvement in the design, commissioning, and operation of critical control systems.

Key facts

What you'll do

Establish and lead the fuel lab OT function, defining strategy, standards, and operational practices for SCADA and industrial control systems.

Own the end-to-end lifecycle of critical OT assets, including requirements, design, procurement, integration, commissioning, and continuous operations for fuel-related facilities.

Architect and implement resilient industrial networking, compute, virtualization, storage, and identity/PKI solutions that meet nuclear safety and cybersecurity standards.

Evaluate and integrate historians, data systems, and OT cybersecurity tools to ensure reliable, secure, and auditable operations in air-gapped environments.

Lead cross-functional design reviews, identifying material technical risks and making defensible architecture decisions for complex fuel lab systems.

Translate regulatory, quality, and cybersecurity requirements into detailed acceptance criteria, verification plans, and standardized procedures for OT equipment.

Manage vendors, contractors, and systems integrators, holding them accountable for technical quality, schedule adherence, and on-time delivery of critical systems.

Deploy and support Rockwell FactoryTalk ecosystems, including FactoryTalk View SE, Linx, Historian SE, and AssetCentre in air-gapped and high-security contexts.

Utilize Proxmox, Arista, Palo Alto, AVEVA PI, InfluxDB, SQL, and Grafana to monitor, visualize, and secure real-time fuel lab data and control flows.

Build and grow an engineering organization, transitioning from hands-on technical leadership to a fully multidisciplinary team driving safe and reliable fuel operations.

Requirements

Demonstrated ownership of OT or industrial control infrastructure for a complex industrial, power-generation, manufacturing, or chemical-processing facility with safety-critical operations.

Experience hiring, managing, and developing engineers while building a scalable technical team or function capable of delivering complex OT systems.

Strong working knowledge of industrial networking, compute, virtualization, storage, identity management, PKI, historians, data systems, OT cybersecurity, and server room infrastructure.

Proven ability to lead systems through the full lifecycle from requirements and design through procurement, integration, commissioning, and sustained operations in regulated environments.

Ability to review multidisciplinary engineering work, identify material technical risks, and make defensible architecture decisions that balance safety, security, and operability.

Experience translating technical, regulatory, quality, and cybersecurity requirements into robust designs, clear acceptance criteria, and comprehensive verification and validation plans.

Demonstrated experience managing vendors, contractors, and systems integrators while enforcing technical quality, schedule adherence, and delivery accountability.

Strong technical writing and visualization skills for producing requirements documents, architecture diagrams, design narratives, procedures, and executive-level communications.

U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency is required due to the sensitive nature of nuclear infrastructure and defense-related technologies.

Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience that demonstrates the required competence.

Nice to have

Preferred experience in nuclear energy, conventional power generation, oil & gas, chemical processing, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, or other safety-critical industries where failure is not an option.

Experience delivering first-of-a-kind facilities, pilot plants, greenfield industrial sites, or major capital projects under tight regulatory and security constraints.

Familiarity with Proxmox, Arista, Palo Alto, AVEVA PI, InfluxDB, SQL, and Grafana for monitoring and visualizing high-performance OT environments.

Experience designing and operating air-gapped environments, network segmentation, unidirectional data flows, and rigorous OT cybersecurity testing methodologies.

Background building an engineering organization from an initial hands-on leadership role into a larger multidisciplinary team with diverse technical disciplines.

Direct experience with Rockwell FactoryTalk, including FactoryTalk View SE, Linx, Historian SE, and AssetCentre in demanding industrial contexts.

Practical notes

U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency is required.

Typical interview steps include a recruiter screen, one or two technical rounds, coding problems, discussion of past projects, and system design questions. Some loops include a take-home task, with final rounds focusing on team fit and opportunity for the candidate to ask questions.

Career growth

Engineering careers usually progress from individual contributor to senior, staff, and principal levels. Some engineers move into management and lead teams of five to twenty people, while others remain on the technical track. Growth follows demonstrated impact, not tenure alone, with clear levels defined by scope, quality, and mentorship expectations. Advancement typically requires owning outcomes end to end rather than completing assigned tasks, especially in roles as critical as fuel lab OT leadership at Valar Atomics.