Valar Atomics

Software Engineer

Posted 15 Days Ago

Hawthorne, CA

In-Office

Junior

Greentech • Energy • Industrial

We create oil and gas from atmospheric elements with the power of atomic energy.

The Role

Design, build, and maintain software applications for nuclear reactors. Develop controls software, integrate systems, and implement cloud infrastructure while ensuring safety and compliance.

Summary Generated by Built In

Valar Atomics' mission is to make the world’s energy by mass-manufacturing and operating nuclear reactors. We are looking for people interested in helping us engineer the next Atomic Age.

We are seeking a Generalist Software Engineer to design, build, and maintain full-stack software applications and embedded/controls applications. You will work at the intersection of traditional software development with cloud platforms and on-premise servers as well as safety-critical control software for operating nuclear energy production and chemical process plants.

What You’ll Do

Develop Controls Software
Write, test, and optimize real-time control applications in C/C++, Rust, and Python for reactor instrumentation and chemical plant control loops.
Integrate Enterprise-Scale Systems
Build robust APIs and messaging layers (MQTT, OPC-UA, publisher-subscriber frameworks, REST/gRPC) to connect PLCs, historians, MES/ERP/Risk & Project planning platforms, and data lakes.
Architect & Deploy Cloud Infrastructure
Design, implement, and operate IaaS/PaaS solutions across AWS, GCP, Azure, and DigitalOcean—using Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
Ensure Safety & Compliance
Implement security-by-design, formal verification, and rigorous testing (HIL/SIL) to satisfy NRC, IEC 61508 (SIL 2-3), and other regulatory requirements.
Monitor & Optimize
Develop dashboards (Grafana, Prometheus) and alerting for system health, performance metrics, and anomaly detection; on-call alerting/notification systems
Collaborate Across Teams
Work closely with electrical and mechanical engineers, process safety experts, and operations teams to translate scientific and regulatory requirements into reliable safety-aware software.

Required Qualifications

1-3 years of professional experience building production-grade systems spanning both cloud platforms and embedded/control environments.
Strong proficiency in Python and one or more compiled languages (C/C++, Rust, Go).
Hands-on experience with DevOps and major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, Digital Ocean, etc.)
Experience working with real-time operating systems, PLC programming, and embedded development on custom hardware.

Preferred Qualifications

B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field; or equivalent working experience.
Nice to have, but not necessary: Prior experience in the nuclear or chemical process industries.
Knowledge of physical layer communication protocols, serial communication protocols, UDP+TCP/IP and general networking infrastructure.
In-depth DevOps, cloud infrastructure, cross-compilation, and build tooling expertise; ability to fully reason about how to take any software you write from development and testing to deployment in production.
Knowledge of how code gets executed on the hardware on which one’s software is running.

Technical Stack

Languages & Frameworks: Python, C/C++, Rust, Go, frontend development
Cloud & Infra: AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean; Terraform (Infrastructure-as-code), CI/CD pipeline development, *nix systems
Controls & Embedded: Bare-metal programming, RTOS, resource constrained software development, PLC programming
Communication: MQTT, OPC UA, REST/gRPC, TCP, UDP, IP, Ethernet, serial communication (I2C, SPI, USB), ModBus, HART
Data & Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, TimescaleDB and PostgreSQL (timeseries-optimized relational databases)
CI/CD & Testing: GitHub Actions, static analysis tools, fuzzing, HIL/SIL testing, debugging tooling, software instrumentation and logging