Senior Manager, Software Engineering, Plant Control

About Helion

We are a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, with the mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. Our vision is a world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone.

Since Helion's founding in 2013, we have raised $1.5 billion from long-time investors such as Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricorn Investment Group as well as new investors including Thrive Capital, LightSpeed Venture Capital, SoftBank, and others to propel us forward. Our current prototype, Polaris, has reached record-breaking plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (13 keV). Helion is continuing to iterate and on the path to the world's first fusion power plant, Orion.

This is a pivotal time to join Helion. You will tackle real-world challenges with a team that prizes urgency, rigor, ownership, and a commitment to delivering hard truths – values essential to achieving what no one has before. Together, we will change the future of energy, because the world can't wait.

Why This Role Matters

A Fusion power plant only produces useful results if something can control it, observe it, and make sense of what it did. The means firmware on the controllers that fire the pulses, supervisory automation that coordinates the machine as a system, the network and infrastructure backbone, and data pipelines that capture events spanning nanoseconds to years. The machine and facility are first of their kind, which means the software is too.

You will lead and scale the team that builds it. This means more than just hiring the right people. It means establishing software engineering as a core functional discipline by creating processes that enable the team to do their best work and building the structure around how software and hardware teams interact at Helion.

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead and grow the Plant Control Software team, a multidisciplinary team across firmware, application software, networking, infrastructure, and cybersecurity.

• Own delivery of the plant control software stack across its embedded, supervisory, networking, and data layers.

• Partner closely with electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, fuel cycle, systems engineering, operations, and science. Our software ships against hardware on a shared schedule and the coordination across those boundaries is a core responsibility.

• Establish the engineering principles that will be the foundation for this team as it grows including how it plans, reviews, tests, deploys, responds to faults, and hands off to operations.

Required Skills

• 10+ years of experience building complex control systems for hardware 3+ years of experience in a leadership role building and managing a multidisciplinary software team (software engineers, firmware/embedded engineers, with a diversity of level from early career to senior).

• Depth in real-time, embedded, or control software for physical systems, sufficient to hold technical direction with a senior team.

• A track record of delivering software against hardware on a shared schedule in an environment where the hardware is the product.

• Experience hiring, and growing engineers over time.

• The ability to work fluently across disciplinary boundaries with electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, systems engineers, operators, and scientists.

• A degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

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Benefits

Our total compensation package includes benefits, including but not limited to:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision plans for employees and their families

• 31 Days of PTO (21 vacation days and 10 sick days)

• 10 Paid holidays, plus company-wide winter break

• Up to 5% employer 401(k) match

• Short term disability, long term disability, and life insurance

• Paid parental leave and support (up to 16 weeks)

• Annual wellness stipend

Helion is an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the interview process, please let us know.