Lead Electrical Engineer

Lead Electrical Engineer

Torrance, California, United States

At Valar Atomics, we're redefining what's possible in energy. Our mission is to make clean, high-temperature nuclear power scalable—unlocking abundant energy for industry, hydrogen, and next-generation manufacturing. We are a team of builders, engineers, and operators who believe nuclear energy should be fast to deploy, factory-made, and built for the real world. Our first pilot plant in Orangeville, Utah will demonstrate how advanced nuclear systems and fuel fabrication can power the future.

Joining Valar Atomics means becoming part of a company where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level.

You will lead Valar Atomics' Electrical Engineering team within the Instrumentation, Control & Electrical (IC&E) organization. The team delivers the electrical infrastructure that powers and is powered by Valar's facilities, from utility and grid interconnection through generation, MV distribution, process area LV systems, and emergency power across the reactor program, fuel manufacturing operations, and power generation and distribution scope. You will work alongside I&C, mechanical, process, power conversion, and nuclear safety engineers in a hands-on environment where power system integrity directly supports production reliability and nuclear safety, with some of the most technically interesting generation and distribution challenges in the advanced nuclear sector.

The team values technical depth, disciplined documentation, and a safety-first culture, and you will set that tone for the engineers you hire.

Valar Atomics is seeking a Lead Electrical Engineer to lead and build our electrical engineering team, and to own electrical engineering delivery across the full plant scope, Reactor, Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing, Power Generation, and Power Distribution. This is a player-coach role: you will be both the team's leader, hiring, developing, directing, and growing electrical engineers across our career ladder, and its most senior technical voice while that team is built, with design responsibility spanning LV, MV, and HV systems from utility interconnection and the generation switchyard through medium voltage distribution to process and facility low voltage systems.

You will own the electrical architecture of a first-of-a-kind nuclear power plant, including its power generation electrical scope: generator integration, excitation and protection, step-up transformation, and grid interconnection. This role builds the organization it will lead.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership and Organization Building

• Build the electrical engineering team: define roles and requisitions across the Engineer / Senior / Staff / Principal ladder with the Director, recruit and interview candidates, own hiring recommendations, and onboard and integrate new engineers.
• Lead the team day to day: assign and prioritize work across the four plant areas, direct and review technical output, manage performance, and develop each engineer's technical depth and progression along the ladder.
• Own engineering resourcing strategy: workload forecasting across Reactor, Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing, Power Generation, and Power Distribution scopes; internal versus contractor engineering allocation; and technical direction and oversight of engineering subcontractors and consultants.
• Establish the discipline's ways of working — checking practice, calculation and study bases, design standards, and documentation discipline — and evolve their ownership to Staff and Principal engineers as the team grows.

Technical Leadership and Delivery

• Own electrical engineering delivery across all four plant areas: the scope, quality, and schedule of power system studies, designs, specifications, and construction and commissioning support produced by the team.
• Own the plant electrical architecture end-to-end across voltage classes: HV utility interconnection and switchyard, generator and generator step-up (GSU) transformer integration, MV distribution, LV process and facility systems, emergency and standby power, and DC/UPS systems.
• Own the power generation electrical scope: generator specification and…