Why Nuclearn.ai

Nuclearn.ai builds AI‑powered software for the nuclear and utility industries - tools that keep critical infrastructure reliable, efficient, and safe. Our software integrates AI driven workflow, documentation, and research automation and is already used at 60+ nuclear reactors across North America. We need a hands‑on engineering leader to turn that momentum into disciplined, reliable delivery.

This is a new role. All software engineers will report through you. You'll shape the org, raise the bar on reliability, and ship features that matter to real plants.

Eligibility: U.S. citizenship or permanent residency (green card) is required due to DOE export compliance.

The role & impact

You'll own engineering execution across a modern Python/React stack and a regulated, customer‑integrated environment. That means building the team, hardening the platform, and shipping - often in the same week. This is a working director role. You will code, review, and design while setting the bar for how we blend modern software engineering with production‑grade AI.

People & org

• Own the org design (backend, frontend) and the architecture that supports it;
• Hire, onboard, and coach ICs and leads; set clear growth paths and expectations.
• Run the rooms: weekly planning, architecture/design sessions, AI+UX charrettes, post‑incident RCAs, and incident drills.
• Build an AI‑enabled engineering culture - when and how to use AI pair programming, code generation, and test synthesis safely.
  
  

Delivery, reliability & AI‑assisted dev

• Own SDLC and release management (branching, feature flags, safe rollbacks).
• Institute typed APIs and schema migration discipline (backfills, idempotency, partitioning).
• Drive Sentry triage and error‑budget/SLOs; implement retries, back‑pressure, DLQs, circuit breakers.
• Embed AI in the toolchain: automated test generation, static‑analysis + AI code review prompts, release‑note drafting, log summarization, etc.
• Define “customer‑visible reliability” metrics (uptime, success rates, SLA adherence) and publish them internally.
  
  

Data connectors, integrations & AI pipelines

• Lead robust integrations with DevonWay, Maximo, and Microsoft 365 (Teams/OneNote).
• Build safe, traceable re‑processing (versioned transforms, replayable queues, full lineage).
• Stand up retrieval pipelines that can power in‑product AI (schema‑aware indexing, PII filtering, audit logs).
  
  

Product, UX/UI & AI Experience

• Rethink UX with AI: design “copilot‑style” flows in CAP AI and AtomAssist that propose, simulate, explain, then apply - with human‑in‑the‑loop gates and diffs you can trust.
• Partner with Design to create AI‑first UI patterns (natural‑language to action, draft‑to‑diff changes, semantic search across customer content) that map to utilities' workflows and approvals.
  
  

Security, compliance & AI governance

• Embed secure SDLC and change control that satisfy SOC 2/ISO 27001 without stalling delivery.
• Support vendor risk reviews and DPAs in MSAs; help field enterprise questionnaires.
  
  

Customer‑facing engineering

• Join key utility calls to scope integrations, demo AI‑enhanced capabilities, and close feedback loops.
• Translate constraints into backlog, SLAs, rollout plans, and clear acceptance criteria.
  
  

Cross‑functional leadership

• Partner with Product on quarterly planning and the “toward 100% automation” roadmap.
• Work with Customer Success on renewals (license entitlements, usage reporting, uptime) and measure time saved and AI suggestion acceptance as value proof.
• Present progress and risks to founders and the board with clear, actionable metrics (DORA, SLOs, AI‑assist KPIs).
  
  

Examples of Near‑term problems you'll tackle (first 90 days)

• Reliability: Cut a noisy class of Sentry errors by 30%+ via task idempotency, DLQs, and AI‑assisted log triage.
• Automation guardrails: Roll out “simulate → review → apply” gating for CAP automations with dry‑run diffs, explanations, and full audit trails.
• Data pipeline: Deliver a OneNote → AtomAssist connector: tabular ingest, strict schema validation, safe reprocessing, lineage.
• Process: Stand up lightweight engineering metrics (DORA), on‑call, incident response, RCA templates; add AI to draft postmortems.
• Org: Fill priority roles (e.g., Full Stack Engineers) and level up existing teams with crisp ownership.
  
  

You'll thrive here if you…

• Have led 5 - 20+ engineers across multiple disciplines at a startup or regulated enterprise.
• Are a player‑coach: you can dig into FastAPI/React/Postgres/Celery and still scale the org.
• Care about correctness and safety: typed contracts, migrations with backfills, idempotent jobs, tests that catch sharp edges.
• Have shipped AI‑powered features and know how to measure and improve trust (evals, guardrails, human‑in‑the‑loop).
• Are comfortable with utility customers—able to demo, clarify constraints, and negotiate pragmatic workarounds.
• Communicate clearly under pressure and keep teams focused when the alerts page lights up.
  
  

Nice To Have (not Required)

• Experience with RAG/data pipelines, vector search, feature stores, or LLM ops (prompt/versioning, evals, monitoring).
• Background in nuclear/utility or other safety‑critical domains (aviation, med‑device, rail).
• SOC 2/ISO 27001 experience.
• Familiarity with Maximo, DevonWay, Microsoft 365 integrations.
  
  

The stack you'll shepherd

• Frontend: React, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
• Backend: Python (FastAPI)
• Data/Infra: PostgreSQL, SQLite; Redis, RabbitMQ, Celery
• DevOps: Docker/Podman, Kubernetes; GitHub Actions
• Observability: Sentry, Netdata
• Quality: PyTest, Cypress
• Collab: Git/GitHub
  
  

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary: $180k - $214k
• Equity: 0.10% - 0.28%, in the form of stock options
• Bonus: 10%, annual
• Benefits: Unlimited PTO, health/dental/vision insurance
  
  

Work model & travel

Full‑time, salaried. Hybrid at Phoenix HQ (≥80% in‑office; Wednesdays remote). Occasional travel to customer sites, conferences, or auditors as needed.

How We Hire (fast, Respectful, Practical)

• 20‑min founder intro to trade context and assess mutual fit
• Leadership & systems deep dive (org design, SDLC, reliability plan)
• Team panel + working session (design review or incident/RCA exercise)
• Final chat on 90‑day plan & success metrics
  
  

We aim to move from first chat to decision quickly.

Ready to lead engineering that keeps critical infrastructure running? We'd love to meet you.