Software Engineer

Valar Atomics' mission is to make the world’s energy by mass-manufacturing and operating nuclear reactors.  We are looking for people interested in helping us engineer the next Atomic Age.

We are seeking a Generalist Software Engineer to design, build, and maintain full-stack software applications and embedded/controls applications. You will work at the intersection of traditional software development with cloud platforms and on-premise servers as well as safety-critical control software for operating nuclear energy production and chemical process plants.

What You’ll Do

• Develop Controls Software
  Write, test, and optimize real-time control applications in C/C++, Rust, and Python for reactor instrumentation and chemical plant control loops.
• Integrate Enterprise-Scale Systems
  Build robust APIs and messaging layers (MQTT, OPC-UA, publisher-subscriber frameworks, REST/gRPC) to connect PLCs, historians, MES/ERP/Risk & Project planning platforms, and data lakes.
• Architect & Deploy Cloud Infrastructure
  Design, implement, and operate IaaS/PaaS solutions across AWS, GCP, Azure, and DigitalOcean—using Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ensure Safety & Compliance
  Implement security-by-design, formal verification, and rigorous testing (HIL/SIL) to satisfy NRC, IEC 61508 (SIL 2-3), and other regulatory requirements.
• Monitor & Optimize
  Develop dashboards (Grafana, Prometheus) and alerting for system health, performance metrics, and anomaly detection; on-call alerting/notification systems
• Collaborate Across Teams
  Work closely with electrical and mechanical engineers, process safety experts, and operations teams to translate scientific and regulatory requirements into reliable safety-aware software.

Required Qualifications

• 1-3 years of professional experience building production-grade systems spanning both cloud platforms and embedded/control environments.
• Strong proficiency in Python and one or more compiled languages (C/C++, Rust, Go).
• Hands-on experience with DevOps and major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, Digital Ocean, etc.)
• Experience working with real-time operating systems, PLC programming, and embedded development on custom hardware.

Preferred Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field; or equivalent working experience.
• Nice to have, but not necessary: Prior experience in the nuclear or chemical process industries.
• Knowledge of physical layer communication protocols, serial communication protocols, UDP+TCP/IP and general networking infrastructure.
• In-depth DevOps, cloud infrastructure, cross-compilation, and build tooling expertise; ability to fully reason about how to take any software you write from development and testing to deployment in production.
• Knowledge of how code gets executed on the hardware on which one’s software is running.

Technical Stack

• Languages & Frameworks: Python, C/C++, Rust, Go, frontend development
• Cloud & Infra: AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean; Terraform (Infrastructure-as-code), CI/CD pipeline development, *nix systems
• Controls & Embedded: Bare-metal programming, RTOS, resource constrained software development, PLC programming
• Communication: MQTT, OPC UA, REST/gRPC, TCP, UDP, IP, Ethernet, serial communication (I2C, SPI, USB), ModBus, HART
• Data & Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, TimescaleDB and PostgreSQL (timeseries-optimized relational databases)
• CI/CD & Testing: GitHub Actions, static analysis tools, fuzzing, HIL/SIL testing, debugging tooling, software instrumentation and logging