Automation and Controls Engineer

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.

The Team

You will be joining Valar Atomics' Automation and Controls team within the Instrumentation, Control & Electrical (IC&E) organization. Automation and Controls own the logic and data layer PLC and DCS application code, ISA-88 batch sequences, SCADA and HMI applications, historian infrastructure, and enterprise integration across the reactor program and fuel manufacturing operations. You will work alongside I&C Hardware, electrical, process, and nuclear safety engineers in an environment that blends traditional control systems with modern software and data integration practice.

As a staff engineer, you will be one of the technical anchors of this team: the engineer others come to when the problem is novel, ambiguous, orhigh-consequence. The team values operator-focused design, data integrity, disciplined documentation, and a safety-first culture.

The Role

Valar Atomics is seeking Staff Automation and Controls Engineers to serve as discipline technical authorities for control system software across our reactor and nuclear fuel manufacturing facilities. The role spans the full controls software domain: PLC and DCS programming, SCADA and HMI applications, ISA-88 batch control, alarm management, safety logic, historians, enterprise integration, and OT infrastructure, from capital project execution through ongoing plant operations.

This is a staff position: in addition to owning the most complex controls software scope end-to-end, you will set the coding standards, template libraries, and configuration management practices the discipline runs on, lead resolution of first-of-a-kind plant control problems where no established solution exists, review and approve the work of other engineers, and provide technical direction and mentorship across the software team.

You are accountable not only for your own code, but for the technical quality and consistency ofcontrolssoftware across projects and sites.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Discipline Ownership

• Serve as the responsible engineer and discipline technical authority for controls software on assigned systems; review and approve PLC/DCS application code, SCADA applications, safety logic, and test documentation produced by other engineers, contractors, and integrators.
• Establish, maintain, and enforce discipline software standards including application coding standards, template and UDT libraries, the ISA-101/HPHMI display style guide, alarm philosophy implementation standards, testing standards, and the software configuration management and change control practice used across projects and sites.
• Lead control strategy and software architecture development for first-of-a-kind plant control problems where no established solution exists, including control approach trade studies, platform capability evaluation, prototyping, and validation planning.
• Lead controls software participation in interdisciplinary design reviews, HAZOP studies, control narrative reviews, and licensing-support activities; represent the discipline's position and own the resolution of cross-discipline technical conflicts.
• Define the controls platform and…