Licensing Engineer

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.

The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy.

About the Role

Antares is seeking a Licensing Engineer to develop and execute licensing and permitting strategies for the Antares R1 product line and future commercial microreactor deployments. The engineer will prepare regulatory products, coordinate engagements, translate regulatory requirements into actionable design and program requirements, and drive comments and commitments to documented closure.

The role will support various regulatory pathways including Department of the Army, Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission pathways. Work will include identifying applicable requirements, confirming that Antares design and licensing products satisfy those requirements, and coordinating with stakeholder groups to advance licensing and permitting. NRC work will focus primarily on the anticipated Part 57 pathway while drawing on other NRC frameworks and requirements as applicable. The successful candidate will work closely with engineering, safety analysis, operations, quality, program management, customers, and regulators.

Roles and Responsibilities

- Develop and execute licensing and regulatory engagement strategies.

- Identify applicable regulatory and permitting requirements and translate them into tangible design, analysis, programmatic, and documentation requirements.

- Prepare or coordinate licensing plans, technical briefs, white papers, topical reports, application content, responses to regulator questions, and other regulatory submittals.

- Track regulator and stakeholder comments, commitments, decisions, owners, due dates, resolution evidence, and closure status.

- Evaluate design and program products for compliance with applicable requirements and alignment with the licensing basis.

- Develop regulatory positions and evaluate alternative compliance approaches, including their technical, schedule, cost, and programmatic implications.

- Plan and support regulator and stakeholder engagements; present technical positions directly when appropriate and prepare leaders for higher-level engagements.

- Coordinate cross-functional reviews with engineering, safety analysis, operations, quality, security, program management, and deployment teams.

- Maintain awareness of regulatory developments, guidance, precedent, and emerging licensing approaches relevant to advanced reactors.

- Support the development of scalable, repeatable licensing processes for future commercial deployments.

Basic Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree in engineering or a closely related technical discipline.

- Experience in systems design or a highly regulated technical environment.

- Ability to interpret regulatory requirements and convert them into clear, implementable, and verifiable design or program requirements.

- Strong technical writing, organization, and communication skills.

- Ability to understand complex regulatory relationships and explain the basis for a proposed approach.

- Demonstrated ability to develop creative solutions, evaluate competing alternatives, and communicate tradeoffs.

- Ability to work across disciplines and drive actions to closure in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

- Experience with NRC reactor licensing, DOE authorization-basis development, or nuclear safety analysis.

- Experience supporting advanced reactors, commercial nuclear facilities, DOE nuclear facilities, national laboratories, or university research reactors.

- Experience preparing regulatory submittals, responding to regulator comments or requests for additional information, and tracking commitments to closure.

- Familiarity with NRC licensing frameworks, including Parts 50, 52, and 70, and emerging advanced-reactor licensing approaches.

- Experience interfacing with government agencies, customers, installation stakeholders, or other external approval authorities.

- Working knowledge of systems engineering, design control, safety analysis, nuclear quality assurance, or configuration management.

Culture

At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document’s set of values–here are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful:

- Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, conflicting policies, perverse incentives, and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. “If you want to be certain, then you are apt to be obsolete.” Over-optimizing the components often degrades the system

- Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle

- Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many, even experts, will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies, by definition, must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before, and never choose to do something because that's “how it's always been done”

- Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer, user, or stakeholder face to face, even if that means hopping on a plane. If you can’t make it, find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere, but we believe teams are built in person, and aim to maximize our time together

- Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption

Equal Opportunity

Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, competence, and qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.

ITAR REQUIREMENTS

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987.