Senior Director, Power Plant Engineering
Kairos PowerAlameda, CA
Full Time
Posted October 22, 2026
$258k - $330k
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Listing evidence and provenance
- Source
- Greenhouse View original listing
- Freshness
- Open in the current public read path; this is not an employer guarantee.Last observed October 22, 2026
- Classification
- Modern power-system classification not yet published for this listing.Legacy source industry field: Nuclear Energy
- Pay provenance
- Employer-provided pay
Job Description
The Senior Director of Power Plant Engineering is the senior technical and organizational leader accountable for the technical adequacy, maturity, integration, and execution of the designs produced by the Power Plant Engineering organization.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide strategic leadership and oversight for the Plant Engineering department which includes Reactor Systems, Pebble Handling and Storage Systems, Reactor Coolant Auxiliary Systems, Instrumentation, Control, and Electrical Systems, and the Balance of Plant Systems.
- Establish technical direction, maintain engineering standards, and ensure consistent execution of high-quality engineering products in accordance with the Design Control Program and systems engineering practices established by Design Assurance.
- Ensure that system and discipline designs satisfy applicable requirements, codes and standards, safety functions, and are aligned with program objectives.
- Ensure that design assumptions, margins, uncertainties, limitations, and technical risks are identified, documented, communicated, and appropriately managed.
- Make or approve technical decisions and accept technical risk within delegated authority.
- Hold senior technical leaders accountable for the technical quality, maturity, timeliness, and completeness of their organizations’ work.
- Resolve technical disagreements that cross system or discipline boundaries.
- Ensure that Power Plant Engineering provides technically complete and timely inputs to plant layout, process design, plant design, design analysis, licensing, procurement, construction, testing, commissioning, and operations activities.
- Maintain visibility of significant technical risks, decisions, assumptions, margins, interfaces, and unresolved issues across the organization and ensure they are communicated to affected stakeholders.
- Ensure the integrity and controlled evolution of the plant design and technical baseline, including appropriate incorporation of approved technical decisions and design changes.
- Ensure significant technical decisions, design changes, and issue resolutions are appropriately 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 necessary to support effective engineering execution across the organization.
- Other duties as assigned.
Requirements
- B.S. or M.S degree in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline
- 20+ years of engineering experience supporting nuclear power generation, nuclear design, analysis, licensing, construction, or plant operations.
- 10+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience, including managing large, multidisciplinary engineering organizations, typically comprising 100 or more employees.
- Prior experience serving as a Chief Engineer, Design Authority, Engineering Director or comparable senior technical leadership capacity.
- Demonstrated expertise in one or more core engineering disciplines including Mechanical, Civil/Structural, Nuclear, or other disciplines relevant to nuclear power plant design, with working knowledge across major nuclear engineering disciplines/workstreams.
- Demonstrated experience applying design control, configuration management, and technical baseline management principles within a complex nuclear or similarly regulated engineering environment.
- Strong understanding of regulatory requirements and how they interact with design and operations, quality assurance programs, design control processes.
- Demonstrated experience leading multi-disciplinary 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.
- Experience with first-of-a-kind technologies or programs involving significant technical uncertainty, evolving requirements, and development organizational capability is desired.
- Occasionally requires working weekends
- Occasionally requires schedule flexibility
- Occasionally requires extended hours to support launch and critical project timelines
- The salary range for this position is $258,300 to $330,000 for employees working onsite at our Alameda, CA headquarters. The range provided in this job posting represents the typical range or starting rate of candidates hired in California. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include your education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, the market data for your work location, and a comparison to other employees already in the role.
- #LI-Onsite
Benefits & Perks
- We know that we have some of the most talented and dedicated employees, and we believe in rewarding them accordingly. If you work here, full-time employees (excludes interns) expect to have access to the benefits below:
- Competitive compensation packages
- Medical, dental and vision benefits for employees and their dependents
- Paid Vacation
- 401(k) and pre-tax health insurance, dependent care, and commuter benefits (FSA)
- Candidates only, no recruiters or agencies please.
- Note: You are applying for a position that is located in a facility that handles information that is subject to export control restrictions by the Department of Energy under 10 CFR Part 810. To work in this facility, you need to be authorized by the Department of Energy to access Part 810-controlled information. Foreign nationals who are citizens of countries that are not on the Department of Energy’s general authorization list (link below) are not permitted to work in our facility unless the Department of Energy issues an export control license to the company to permit that individual to have access to Part 810-controlled information. The following questions are intended to determine the licensing requirements that may apply. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/10/appendix-A_to_part_810
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