Senior Director, Power Plant Engineering

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 Senior Director of Power Plant Engineering is the senior technical and organizational leader accountable for the technical adequacy, maturity, integration, and execution of the designs produced by the Power Plant Engineering organization. Reporting to the Vice President of Engineering Design, this position holds final design decision authority for the Power Plant Engineering organization.

The position ensures that the organization produces technically sound, mature, coordinated, and executable designs that meet established plant requirements, design criteria, codes and standards, safety objectives, and program commitments. This is a working senior leadership role requiring hands-on technical experience and active engagement. The Senior Director establishes technical direction, assigns clear decision authority within the organization, and ensures that consequential engineering decisions have an adequate technical basis and are made by qualified decision-makers. The Senior Director holds leaders accountable while personally engaging in consequential technical decisions, design reviews, issue resolution, and recovery of critical engineering work when necessary.  

Responsibilities 

• Provide strategic leadership and oversight for the Plant Engineering department which includes Reactor Systems, Pebble Handling and Storage Systems, Reactor Coolant Auxiliary Systems, Instrumentation, Control, and Electrical Systems, Nuclear Design and Methods and the Balance of Plant Systems. 
• Establish technical direction, maintain engineering standards, and ensure consistent execution of high-quality engineering products in accordance with the Design Control Program and systems engineering practices established by Design Assurance. 
• Ensure that system and discipline designs satisfy applicable requirements, codes and standards, safety functions, and are aligned with program objectives. 
• Ensure that design assumptions, margins, uncertainties, limitations, and technical risks are identified, documented, communicated, and appropriately managed. 
• Make or approve technical decisions and accept technical risk within delegated authority. 
• Hold senior technical leaders accountable for the technical quality, maturity, timeliness, and completeness of their organizations’ work. 
• Resolve technical disagreements that cross system or discipline boundaries. 
• Ensure that Power Plant Engineering provides technically complete and timely inputs to plant layout, process design, plant design, design analysis, licensing, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operations activities. 
• Maintain visibility of significant technical risks, decisions, assumptions, margins, interfaces, and unresolved issues across the organization and ensure they are communicated to affected stakeholders. 
• Ensure the integrity and controlled evolution of the plant design and technical baseline, including appropriate incorporation of approved technical decisions and design changes. 
• Ensure significant technical decisions, design changes, and issue resolutions are appropriately documented, traceable, and incorporated into affected engineering products and requirements. 
• Ensure appropriate technical review and escalation of issues that could materially affect plant safety, licensing basis, design requirements, or overall plant integration. 
• Maintain the technical capability and decision-authority structure necessary to support effective engineering execution across the organization. 
• Other duties as assigned. 

Qualifications 

• B.S. or M.S degree in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline 
• 20+ years of engineering experience supporting nuclear power generation, nuclear design, analysis, licensing, construction, or plant operations. 
• 10+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience, including managing large, multidisciplinary engineering organizations, typically comprising 100 or more employees. 
• Prior experience serving as a Chief Engineer, Design Authority, Engineering Director or comparable senior technical leadership capacity. 
• Demonstrated expertise in one or more core engineering disciplines including Mechanical, Civil/Structural, Nuclear, or other disciplines relevant to nuclear power plant design, with working knowledge across major nuclear engineering disciplines/workstreams. 
• Demonstrated experience applying design control, configuration management, and technical baseline management principles within a complex nuclear or similarly regulated engineering environment. 
• Strong understanding of regulatory requirements and how they interact with design and operations, quality assurance programs, design control processes. 
• Demonstrated experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering projects through multiple stages of design maturity and making consequential technical decisions. 
• Demonstrated success holding senior engineering leaders and organizations accountable for technical quality, ownership, and follow-through across multiple geographic locations. 
• Experience with first-of-a-kind technologies or programs involving significant technical uncertainty, evolving requirements, and development organizational capability is desired. 

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Knowledge of nuclear power plant design and operation, including nuclear safety principles, safety classification, defense-in-depth, reactor design and analysis, plant operational design (accident and transient response), and radiological design. 
• Knowledge of the functions and interactions of major power plant systems and the relationship between detailed system design and overall plant safety, performance, operability, reliability, maintainability, and constructability. 
• Knowledge of system and discipline design development from conceptual and preliminary design through detailed design, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operation of large complex industrial plants. 
• Knowledge of engineering decision-making, technical authority, design reviews, technical baselines, interface management, design margins, uncertainty management, and risk acceptance. 
• Knowledge of configuration management and engineering change control principles as they apply to maintaining an established plant design and technical baseline. 
• Skill in leading multiple engineering departments, plant system organizations, managers, and senior technical leaders toward common technical and execution objectives. 
• Skill in evaluating plant-level technical tradeoffs involving safety, performance, operability, reliability, constructability, cost, schedule, and design maturity without compromising established requirements or safety objectives. 
• Skill in evaluating complex system and discipline designs for technical adequacy, maturity, completeness, compliance, and integration. 
• Skill in developing, documenting, and implementing consequential technical decisions using incomplete or evolving information. 
• Skill in assessing, coaching, and developing directors, managers, technical authorities, and senior engineers and in providing direct, actionable performance feedback. 
• Ability to recognize the broader plant implications of decisions originating within an individual system or engineering discipline. 
• Ability to distinguish matters that can be resolved within a system or discipline from those requiring plant-level integration, Design Assurance involvement, or executive direction. 
• Ability to integrate differing technical perspectives, challenge unsupported conclusions constructively, and reach timely decisions across organizational boundaries. 
• Ability to determine when technical issues require escalation, independent review, additional analysis, or broader plant-level decision-making based on technical significance and risk. 

Physical Demands  

• Remaining in a stationary position, often standing, or sitting for prolonged periods 
• Moving about to accomplish tasks or moving from one worksite to another 

Environmental Conditions 

• General office environment 
• Assessing the accuracy, neatness and thoroughness of the work assigned 
• High-concentration, demanding and fast-paced 
• Manufacturing/Industrial Environment 
• Prototyping/Testing Environment 

Safety and PPE 

• Reading and interpreting hazardous warning signs 
• Reporting issues with equipment or unsafe conditions 
• Wearing proper personal protective equipment (PPE), which may include respiratory protection, face protection, gloves, safety footwear, or other PPE as required 

Travel 

• Some travel may be required, up to 25%

Additional Requirements 

• Occasionally requires working weekends   
• Occasionally requires schedule flexibility  
• Occasionally requires extended hours to support launch and critical project timelines  

The salary range for this position is $258,300 to $330,000 for employees working onsite at our Alameda, CA headquarters. The range provided in this job posting represents the typical range or starting rate of candidates hired in California. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include your education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, the market data for your work location, and a comparison to other employees already in the role.

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About our Benefits

We know that we have some of the most talented and dedicated employees, and we believe in rewarding them accordingly. If you work here, full-time employees (excludes interns) expect to have access to the benefits below:

• Competitive compensation packages
• Medical, dental and vision benefits for employees and their dependents
• Paid Vacation
• 401(k) and pre-tax health insurance, dependent care, and commuter benefits (FSA)

Kairos Power is committed to building a diverse workforce that reflects the communities where we do business. Kairos Power is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We actively welcome people of different experiences, abilities, and perspectives.

Kairos Power participates in E-Verify.

Candidates only, no recruiters or agencies please.

Note: You are applying for a position that is located in a facility that handles information that is subject to export control restrictions by the Department of Energy under 10 CFR Part 810. To work in this facility, you need to be authorized by the Department of Energy to access Part 810-controlled information. Foreign nationals who are citizens of countries that are not on the Department of Energy’s general authorization list (link below) are not permitted to work in our facility unless the Department of Energy issues an export control license to the company to permit that individual to have access to Part 810-controlled information. The following questions are intended to determine the licensing requirements that may apply. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/10/appendix-A_to_part_810