Senior Safety Analysis Engineer at Radiant in El Segundo, CA

Job description

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 Senior Safety Analysis Engineer to lead reactor safety analyses supporting the design, testing, and deployment of Kaleidos. You will evaluate reactor behavior during normal, transient, and accident conditions, assess safety margins, and develop technically defensible analyses that inform reactor design decisions and regulatory evaluations. This role combines reactor systems and thermal-hydraulic analysis with fuel performance, source term development, and radiological consequence assessments. You will own complex analytical work from methodology development and model execution through uncertainty evaluation, technical review, and documentation, working closely with nuclear design, thermal, mechanical, materials, testing, and regulatory teams. The ideal candidate brings strong reactor safety fundamentals, hands-on modeling experience, and sound engineering judgment. You should be comfortable identifying dominant physical phenomena, evaluating analytical uncertainties, and translating complex results into practical design and safety decisions. Responsibilities & Duties • Lead deterministic reactor safety analyses covering anticipated operational occurrences, transients, and postulated accident scenarios. • Develop and apply system-level thermal-hydraulic and transient models to evaluate reactor response, operating limits, and safety margins. • Perform source term and radiological consequence analyses, including fuel performance, fission product release and transport, and dose evaluations. • Evaluate uncertainties in reactor physics, power distributions, fuel behavior, and thermal-hydraulic models and their impact on safety conclusions. • Apply sensitivity studies, bounding assumptions, and phenomena-ranking methods to develop technically defensible analysis approaches. • Collaborate with nuclear, mechanical, thermal, materials, and controls teams to establish analysis inputs, evaluate design alternatives, and resolve safety-related technical challenges. • Partner with testing and materials teams to identify data gaps, establish validation requirements, and correlate analytical predictions with experimental results. • Develop and improve safety analysis methods, models, and tools, including verification and validation, configuration control, and uncertainty quantification. • Prepare and technically review calculation packages, safety analysis reports, and regulatory documentation supporting reactor design and licensing activities. • Work with regulatory and safety teams to establish safety requirements, support technical submissions, and resolve technical issues through closure. Required Qualifications & Skills • Bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution. • 5+ years of relevant experience in reactor safety analysis, thermal-hydraulics, nuclear systems modeling, or related engineering disciplines. • Experience developing and applying reactor systems or safety analysis codes such as RELAP5-3D, TRACE, SAM, MELCOR, or equivalent tools. • Strong understanding of react