Senior Director, Power Plant Engineering

Kairos Power•Alameda, CA

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Kairos Power is a nuclear energy technology and engineering company working to commercialize a fluoride-salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (FHR) intended to support clean energy with robust safety, affordable costs, and flexible operation. The Senior Director of Power Plant Engineering is the senior technical and organizational leader accountable for the technical adequacy, maturity, integration, and execution of designs produced by the Power Plant Engineering organization. Reporting to the Vice President of Engineering Design, this role holds final design decision authority for the organization. This hands-on senior leadership position establishes technical direction, assigns decision authority, and ensures consequential engineering decisions have an adequate technical basis and are made by qualified decision-makers. The Senior Director holds leaders accountable while personally engaging in consequential technical decisions, design reviews, issue resolution, and recovery of critical engineering work when necessary. The organization includes Reactor Systems, Pebble Handling and Storage Systems, Reactor Coolant Auxiliary Systems, Instrumentation, Control, and Electrical Systems, and Balance of Plant Systems. The role ensures that designs meet plant requirements, design criteria, codes and standards, safety objectives, and program commitments. It oversees design integration and the controlled evolution of the plant design and technical baseline, and ensures significant decisions, changes, risks, assumptions, and issue resolutions are documented, traceable, and communicated to affected stakeholders. Power Plant Engineering provides inputs to plant layout, process and plant design, design analysis, licensing, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operations. The position is based onsite at Kairos Power’s Alameda, California headquarters. Some travel may be required, up to 25%.

Requirements

B.S. or M.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline.
20 or more years of engineering experience supporting nuclear power generation, nuclear design, analysis, licensing, construction, or plant operations.
10 or more years of progressive engineering leadership experience, including management of large, multidisciplinary engineering organizations, typically comprising 100 or more employees.
Prior experience as a Chief Engineer, Design Authority, Engineering Director, or in a comparable senior technical leadership role.
Demonstrated expertise in one or more core engineering disciplines, such as Mechanical, Civil/Structural, Nuclear, or another discipline relevant to nuclear power plant design, with working knowledge across major nuclear engineering disciplines and workstreams.
Demonstrated experience applying design control, configuration management, and technical baseline management principles in a complex nuclear or similarly regulated engineering environment.
Strong understanding of regulatory requirements and their interaction with design and operations, quality assurance programs, and design control processes.
Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary engineering projects through multiple stages of design maturity and making consequential technical decisions.
Demonstrated success holding senior engineering leaders and organizations accountable for technical quality, ownership, and follow-through across multiple geographic locations.
Knowledge of nuclear power plant design and operation, including nuclear safety principles, safety classification, defense-in-depth, reactor design and analysis, plant operational design, accident and transient response, and radiological design.
Knowledge of major power plant systems and how detailed system design relates to overall plant safety, performance, operability, reliability, maintainability, and constructability.
Knowledge of system and discipline design development from conceptual and preliminary design through detailed design, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operation of large complex industrial plants.
Knowledge of engineering decision-making, technical authority, design reviews, technical baselines, interface management, design margins, uncertainty management, and risk acceptance.
Knowledge of configuration management and engineering change control principles for maintaining an established plant design and technical baseline.
Skill in leading multiple engineering departments, plant system organizations, managers, and senior technical leaders toward common technical and execution objectives.
Skill in evaluating plant-level technical tradeoffs involving safety, performance, operability, reliability, constructability, cost, schedule, and design maturity without compromising established requirements or safety objectives.
Skill in evaluating complex system and discipline designs for technical adequacy, maturity, completeness, compliance, and integration.
Skill in developing, documenting, and implementing consequential technical decisions using incomplete or evolving information.
Skill in assessing, coaching, and developing directors, managers, technical authorities, and senior engineers, and providing direct, actionable performance feedback.
Ability to recognize broader plant implications of decisions originating within an individual system or discipline.
Ability to distinguish issues that can be resolved within a system or discipline from those requiring plant-level integration, Design Assurance involvement, or executive direction.
Ability to integrate differing technical perspectives, constructively challenge unsupported conclusions, and reach timely decisions across organizational boundaries.
Ability to determine when technical issues require escalation, independent review, additional analysis, or broader plant-level decision-making based on technical significance and risk.
Ability to work in a facility handling information subject to U.S. Department of Energy export control restrictions; access to Part 810-controlled information requires DOE authorization.

Nice To Haves

Experience with first-of-a-kind technologies or programs involving significant technical uncertainty, evolving requirements, and development of organizational capability.

Responsibilities

Provide strategic leadership and oversight for the Plant Engineering department and its system organizations.
Establish technical direction, maintain engineering standards, and ensure high-quality engineering execution under the Design Control Program and systems engineering practices established by Design Assurance.
Ensure system and discipline designs meet applicable requirements, codes and standards, safety functions, and program objectives.
Ensure design assumptions, margins, uncertainties, limitations, and technical risks are identified, documented, communicated, and managed.
Make or approve technical decisions and accept technical risk within delegated authority.
Hold senior technical leaders accountable for the quality, maturity, timeliness, and completeness of their organizations’ work.
Resolve technical disagreements that cross system or discipline boundaries.
Ensure the organization provides technically complete and timely inputs to plant layout, process design, plant design, design analysis, licensing, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operations.
Maintain visibility of significant technical risks, decisions, assumptions, margins, interfaces, and unresolved issues, and communicate them to affected stakeholders.
Ensure integrity and controlled evolution of the plant design and technical baseline, including incorporation of approved technical decisions and design changes.
Ensure significant technical decisions, design changes, and issue resolutions are documented, traceable, and incorporated into affected engineering products and requirements.
Ensure appropriate technical review and escalation of issues that could materially affect plant safety, licensing basis, design requirements, or overall plant integration.
Maintain the technical capability and decision-authority structure needed for effective engineering execution across the organization.
Perform other duties as assigned.