Nuclear Safety Engineer

Ocean Atomics • Bethesda, MD

4d

About The Position

Ocean Atomics (OA) is an American company designing, licensing, and assembling a standardized nuclear electric power plant and the surrounding support systems for maritime applications. We will install these plants on any vessel built to our nuclear-ready standards, and will provide end-to-end sustainment in our planned nuclear lifecycle dockyard. We will help develop the licensed operators to unlock this new capability for your energy intensive application at sea. To move fast and to lead the creation of this new market, we are leveraging the compact, proven systems enabled by water-cooled reactors. Our mission is to scale nuclear energy and power generations. Our vision is a maritime commons thriving with abundant, economical, modern, and safe nuclear-powered activity — built, serviced, and staffed by re-industrialized American shipyards and people. This role owns the safety case and probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) for a marine reactor and its supporting systems, demonstrating that the plant meets safety requirements across normal, off-normal, and accident conditions throughout the vessel's operating life. Beyond just analyzing, this role will iterate closely with the engineering team to establish the optimal architecture of systems.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in nuclear, or mechanical (advanced degree preferred).
• Demonstrated experience developing safety cases and PRA for nuclear systems.
• Proficiency with PRA methods and tools (e.g., fault/event tree analysis, reliability data, SAPHIRE or equivalent).
• Working knowledge of nuclear safety standards and regulatory frameworks (NRC, IMO, naval, or international equivalents).

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain the safety case and supporting PRA models for the reactor and associated ship systems.
• Actively use the PRA and underlying data to inform and optimize the engineering design of the overall system throughout the design phases.
• Identify initiating events and failure modes, perform hazard and accident analyses, and quantify risk to verify compliance with safety acceptance criteria.
• Support design reviews and trade studies, translating safety findings into requirements and design changes for the secondary and balance-of-plant systems.
• Maintain safety documentation and traceability through configuration changes, operational feedback, and as-built modifications.
• Interface with regulators, classification societies, and internal review boards, and prepare licensing and certification deliverables.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior