Principal Electrical Engineer, Electronics

About Radiant

Radiant is an El Segundo, CA-based startup building the world’s first mass-produced, portable nuclear microreactors. Rising energy demand is straining the U.S. grid and driving up utility costs, emissions, and interconnection backlogs. Radiant decentralizes energy, producing power close to where it’s used. Its first reactor, Kaleidos, is a factory-built, 1-megawatt, fail-safe microreactor that can be transported by land, sea, or air and runs up to 5 years without refueling. Deployed locally without a decade-long build or permitting fight, Kaleidos provides independent power for critical infrastructure like military bases, data centers, hospitals, and remote sites. Founded in 2020, Radiant is under contract to deliver power to the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and has pre-order agreements with Equinix, with deployments beginning in 2028.

About the Role

Radiant is seeking a Principal or Staff Electrical Engineer to define and lead the electrical architecture for Kaleidos, our commercial microreactor targeted for customer deployment in 2028. The work spans full-stack PCB development, mixed-signal design, high-speed interfaces, power distribution, and signal integrity to support the data acquisition, signal conditioning, and real-time processing that reactor control depends on.

You will serve as the technical lead for custom hardware, setting design standards, driving architecture decisions, and owning high-reliability, low-noise board development from requirements definition and schematic capture through layout, bring-up, validation, and field deployment. You will shape the hardware roadmap and guide the electrical team's technical direction as we scale toward first commercial deployments in 2028.

Responsibilities & Duties:

• Own the boards that control a fission reactor: multilayer mixed-signal designs for reactor control and instrumentation, terrestrial today with space applications ahead.

• Define and own the electrical architecture strategy for mixed-signal systems: power distribution, analog front ends, and digital control interfaces.

• Design low-noise analog front-end circuits and integrate them with ADC/DAC and digital subsystems.

• Own schematic capture, component selection, and layout, including high-speed and precision routing for sensor interfaces, data acquisition paths, and communication buses, with focus on signal integrity, power integrity, grounding, and EMI/EMC mitigation.

• Bring up, debug, and validate hardware hands-on through board-level testing, instrumentation, and root-cause analysis.

• Write and execute the validation and qualification plans that prove performance, reliability, and environmental margin.

• Work directly with firmware, FPGA, DSP, and responsible engineers at the hardware-software boundary.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across the electrical team, lead design reviews, and own hardware risk identification and mitigation.

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field.

• 8+ years designing custom PCBs, including multilayer and mixed-signal boards.

• Prior experience shipping hardware you designed, carried from requirements through layout, bring-up, and qualification into production or field deployment.

• Demonstrated experience setting electrical architecture direction and driving decisions across complex, multi-disciplinary programs.

• Strong experience with schematic capture and PCB layout tools (Altium, Cadence, or similar).

• Solid command of signal integrity, power integrity, grounding strategies, and EMI/EMC mitigation.

• Analog and mixed-signal design experience, including sensor interfaces, ADC/DAC integration, and low-noise practices.

• Familiarity with high-speed interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet) and their layout constraints.

• Hands-on experience with board bring-up, debugging, and lab instrumentation (oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, VNAs).

• Experience designing for high-reliability or harsh environments (nuclear, aerospace, defense, or industrial).

Desired Qualifications & Skills:

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field.

• Familiarity with radiation effects and radiation-tolerant electronics design.

• Experience with power electronics or power distribution design.

• Exposure to FPGA or embedded systems supporting hardware/software co-design.

• Familiarity with nuclear instrumentation or detector interface electronics.

• Experience with DFM, DFT, and production bring-up.

Additional Requirements:

• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as necessary to accomplish our mission.

• Must work 100% onsite at El Segundo HQ.

Benefits and Perks

• Stock: Substantial incentive stock plan for all full-time employees.

• Medical: 100% up to base silver level plan for employee + 50% dependents, offers up to Platinum plans.

• One Medical: Sponsored memberships for employees and their dependents.

• Vision: 100% top tier plan coverage + 50% for dependents.

• Dental: 100% top tier plan coverage, orthodontia extra, 50% for dependents.

• Voluntary life, accident, hospital, critical illness, commuter and FSA/HSA are offered as employee contributed benefits.

• 8-weeks of paid parental leave for all parents. Additional paid pregnancy leave for CA employees.

• Daily catered lunch. Free snacks and drinks.

• Flexible PTO policy. Remote workday allocation.

• Company and team-bonding events, happy hours and in-person camaraderie.

• Beautiful El Segundo headquarters close to the Pacific Ocean.

Total Compensation and Benefits
Radiant compensates people for impact and invests in those who continue to raise the bar. Radiant’s new hire compensation package includes base salary, substantial equity grants, and comprehensive health benefits. Total compensation and level are determined through a rigorous evaluation of interview performance, experience, education, and qualifications, and are designed to support continued growth as scope, responsibility, and impact expand at Radiant.

The best of today’s advanced reactor builders don’t wait for job postings. They join the winning team. If that’s you, contact us directly for immediate opportunities:

recruiting@radiantnuclear.com

This position involves access to technology that is subject to U.S. export controls. Any job offer made will be contingent upon the applicant’s capacity to serve in compliance with U.S. export controls.