Principal OT 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

As part of the Engineering organization, Instrumentations & Controls designs the systems that monitor, automate, and protect Valar's facilities and reactor technologies. The team develops reliable control architectures that enable safe and efficient operations.

The Role

Valar Atomics is a young startup that turns ambitious engineering into working hardware. Before our third anniversary, we designed, built, commissioned, and operated a DOE-authorized research reactor outside the national laboratory system. That pace defines how we work: learn quickly, make sound decisions, and build systems that perform. Analysis must lead to decisions and delivery, and we expect people to take ownership and see their work through.

If you want hard problems, real responsibility, and the freedom to build with urgency, bring your judgment and drive to Valar.

Take on the department's most difficult technical problems and step into hands‑on engineering work across its disciplines when needed. Combine broad working capability with deep expertise in several areas to resolve failures and integration problems that cross system boundaries. Your day‑to‑day work would include escalations, developing designs, writing standards, and developing verification procedures all with the goal of improving the systems and supporting the team that builds and operates them.

OT Engineering delivers power and rack infrastructure, compute, networks, identity, security (physical & cyber), operational data, and industrial software platforms (Factory Talk). Factory Talk scope covers backend deployment, configuration, integration, and recovery. PLC programming and controls‑code development are outside this role.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead technical investigations of consequential failures and complex integration problems across physical, software, network, and data dependencies.
• Step into implementation, commissioning, troubleshooting, or recovery work where the department needs technical coverage.
• Test explanations against incomplete or conflicting evidence, establish supported causes, and verify recovery.
• Develop and review architectures, detailed designs, standards, and acceptance methods for demanding systems and interfaces.
• Resolve technical gaps between disciplines, involving specialists when additional depth is needed.
• Turn difficult failures and field lessons into improved designs, usable procedures, and knowledge the team can apply.
• Travel to our Orangeville, UT facility approximately 15% of the time.

You Will Be Successful in This Role if

• Highly organized, with disciplined task tracking, accurate documentation, clear priorities, and reliable follow‑through.
• Broad technical capability and the judgment to recognize missing knowledge and bring in the right expertise.
• Persistent problem solving that connects symptoms across systems, tests competing explanations, and verifies the fix.
• Ability to move between urgent hands‑on work and sustained design work, leaving systems and documentation others can maintain.

Basic Qualifications

• Broad practical capability across power and rack infrastructure; compute, storage, and virtualization;…