Senior Manager, Software Engineering

About Helion

We are a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, with the mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. Our vision is a world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone.
Since Helion's founding in 2013, we have raised $1.5 billion from long-time investors such as Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricorn Investment Group as well as new investors including Thrive Capital, LightSpeed Venture Capital, SoftBank, and others to propel us forward. Our current prototype, Polaris, has reached record-breaking plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (13 keV). Helion is continuing to iterate and on the path to the world's first fusion power plant, Orion.
This is a pivotal time to join Helion. You will tackle real-world challenges with a team that prizes urgency, rigor, ownership, and a commitment to delivering hard truths – values essential to achieving what no one has before. Together, we will change the future of energy, because the world can't wait.

A power plant only functions smoothly if something can control it, observe it, and make sense of how it’s behaving. That means firmware on the controllers that fire the pulses, supervisory automation that coordinates the machine as a system, the network and infrastructure backbone, and data pipelines that capture events spanning nanoseconds to years. It also means the tools the rest of the company uses to operate the plant and run the business: operator tools, procedure infrastructure, maintenance and parts systems, and the data platform that turns machine data into something scientists, operators, and hardware owners can act on.
The machine and facility are first of their kind, which means the software is too. Helion's engineering culture was built around hardware, and software has grown up inside it. This role exists to give software engineering a leader of its own: someone who will establish how the discipline works, how it delivers against hardware, and how the rest of the company engages with it.
You will own two teams and the full software stack from the edge device to the data lake.

• Plant Software builds the software that runs the machine. Firmware and embedded control on the devices that command and measure each pulse, supervisory automation that sequences the plant as a system, the real-time network and timing infrastructure that ties thousands of edge devices together, the infrastructure and cybersecurity those systems depend on, and the pipelines that capture pulse data at the source.

• Enterprise Software builds the data platform and internal applications the company runs on. The pipelines and storage that make per-pulse data usable for science and operations from single pulses to hundreds of millions, and the tools that machine operations, manufacturing, legal, inventory, and business operations teams use every day.

• Own the plant software stack across embedded, supervisory, networking, infrastructure, and data layers, and the enterprise data platform and application roadmap. Software ships against hardware on a shared schedule; the data platform ships against a machine that will run many pulses a day. You own the plan, the risks, and the result.

• Our processes, review gates, and planning norms were designed for hardware. You will set how software plans, reviews, tests, deploys, responds to faults, and hands off to operations, fitted to a first-of-a-kind plant rather than imported from a previous employer: light enough to move at our pace, rigorous enough that the machine is safe to run.

• Electrical, mechanical, systems, fuel cycle, operations, and science teams all depend on software and have their own expectations of it. You will set and hold clear expectations for how those groups engage the software teams, how priorities are negotiated, and how a shared-service team says no, without formal authority over any of them.

• Hire, develop, and support engineers and leaders across both teams. Technical insight is one way to support them; removing a dependency, securing a resource, or asking the question that reframes a stuck problem are others.

• Define and implement practices on the use of LLM-based tools and agents, in engineering workflows and beyond them: data analysis, process automation, and scientific discovery. Identify when to buy, what to build, and how to pursue in-house tools when there’s a case for them.

• 10+ years building software for complex hardware systems.

• 3+ years leading a multidisciplinary software team that includes firmware or embedded engineers and application engineers, across a range of seniority.

• Depth in real-time, embedded, or control software for physical systems to hold technical direction with experienced engineers. Not necessarily writing production code, but able to evaluate tradeoffs and challenge designs.

• The ability to recognize familiar engineering problems amidst unfamiliar applications. Fusion is new; time synchronization, fault handling, high-rate data capture, and hardware-in-the-loop testing are not.

• Experience leading a team that builds data systems or internal tools for customers who are not engineers and prioritizing that work against product delivery.

• A track record of hiring and growing engineers and engineering leaders over time.

• The ability to work across disciplinary boundaries with electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, systems engineers, machine operators, and scientists, and to set expectations with peers you do not manage.

• A degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

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Benefits

Our total compensation package includes benefits, including but not limited to:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision plans for employees and their families

• 31 Days of PTO (21 vacation days and 10 sick days)

• 10 Paid holidays, plus company-wide winter break

• Up to 5% employer 401(k) match

• Short term disability, long term disability, and life insurance

• Paid parental leave and support (up to 16 weeks)

• Annual wellness stipend

Helion is an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the interview process, please let us know.