Reactor Software Engineer I/II

About this role

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, and National Laboratories like Los Alamos, Idaho, and Oak Ridge. Antares has raised over $130M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $13M in government funding.

About the Role

Antares is seeking a Reactor Software Engineer to build the software that operates, tests, and interfaces with our first-of-a-kind microreactor and its hardware-in-the-loop environments. This software sits between reactor controls, instrumentation, operator tools, simulations, and external data systems, collecting live signals, streaming telemetry, executing commands, and helping the system respond predictably to off-nominal conditions.

You will work across a codebase where the same controls and interfaces can run in simulation, on a bench or hardware test stand, and eventually against full-scale reactor hardware. In this role, you will help define data is acquired, validated, routed, displayed, and recorded. You will contribute to how commands are scheduled, gated, confirmed, and executed; and how faults are detected, surfaced, contained, and recovered from.

You will partner with controls, electrical, embedded systems, safety, and test teams to design, implement, and validate hardware-facing software for sensors, data acquisition systems, custom electronics, operator displays, simulations, and HIL/HITL environments. Your work will be central to ensuring the reactor can be safely operated, tested, diagnosed, and eventually deployed.

Key Responsibilities

- Develop reactor software for data acquisition, telemetry processing, command handling, state management, fault response, operator interaction, and automated test environments.

- Own features end-to-end, from test specs and interface definitions through implementation, code review, integration, and documentation.

- Build software that can drive both real instruments and in-memory simulations, keeping controls and interfaces consistent across simulation, bench, HIL/HITL, and reactor environments.

- Implement runtime control features such as timeline scheduling, event/gate handling, mode transitions, command validation, command feedback, and telemetry streaming.

- Create and maintain clear software interfaces for hardware adapters, telemetry sinks, DAQs, sensors, controllers, operator tools, and external data systems.

- Implement data validation and quality logic so telemetry can be marked as valid, invalid, stale, unavailable, suspect, or otherwise actionable by downstream software and operator tools.

- Develop fault-aware software behavior, including detection, classification, containment, recovery, reset behavior, diagnostics, logging, and observability.

- Write automated tests that validate real system behavior, including hardware-facing workflows whenever practical.

- Support simulation, HIL/HITL, hardware bring-up, integrated reactor testing, and debugging across software/hardware boundaries.

- Collaborate with electrical, embedded, controls, software, test, and systems teams to define interface control documents, communication schemas, data dictionaries, and integration test plans.

- Participate in design reviews, code reviews, test readiness reviews, and root-cause investigations during hardware integration and deployment campaigns.

Basic Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.

- Experience developing clean, maintainable production or project software for hardware-integrated, distributed, embedded, robotics, aerospace, automotive, industrial, or mission-critical systems.

- Software Engineer I: 0-2 years experience

- Software Engineer II: 2-5 years experience.

- Strong Python 3 fundamentals, including typed code, dataclasses or equivalent structured data models, exceptions, testing, and idiomatic code organization.

- Working knowledge of data structures, object-oriented design fundamentals, and software interfaces that are readable, testable, and maintainable.

- Familiarity with concurrent, asynchronous, or multi-process software patterns, such as asyncio, threads, multiprocessing, event loops, IPC, networking, or message passing.

- Experience integrating software with sensors, controllers, DAQs, instruments, power supplies, embedded systems, simulations, or other hardware-facing interfaces.

- Ability to design clear data models, state machines, command flows, and testable system behaviors.

- Strong debugging skills across software, hardware, and system-integration boundaries.

- Experience with Git and collaborative engineering workflows, including pull requests, code review, and technical documentation.

- Comfort working in an environment where requirements evolve through prototype testing, hardware bring-up, and cross-functional design tradeoffs.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially when working across software, electrical, controls, test, and systems engineering teams.

- U.S. person status or eligibility to obtain required export authorizations under applicable U.S. export control regulations.

Preferred Skills & Experience

- Experience with hardware or instrumentation software, including DAQs, sensors, serial devices, lab benches, power supplies, controllers, or custom test stands.

- Experience with event-driven systems, command and co

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