Principal Turbomachinery Engineer

PRINCIPAL TURBOMACHINERY ENGINEER:

Valar Atomics is seeking a highly motivated Turbomachinery Engineer to join our team and lead the design and development of the next generation of compressors and turbines for the Ward Series high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors.

RESPONSIBILITES:

• Design, build, and test helium compressors and advanced turbines for high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors
• Own critical turbomachinery components and be responsible for every aspect of the turbomachinery design, demonstrate ownership and work in close collaboration with manufacturing and assembling
• Perform the hydrodynamic sizing and flowpath design and analysis work for impellers and diffusers for the helium compressor and other turbomachinery for the nuclear system
• Ensure that detailed mechanical analysis is performed on all components/systems. Review drawings and make sure that selected designs meet the required standards for life and reliability targets
• Devise accurate and correct models, develop methodologies and first principles-based tools to determine turbomachinery performance and operability
• Work with teams developing other systems to ensure that the designs is optimally integrated and that risks are well balanced across the system
• Own secondary flow analysis and design, ensure that current and future hardware meets performance targets
• Support both component and assembly testing. Be involved with defining the test configuration, the test process/execution and review the results to confirm
• Lead the resolution of issues encountered with the turbopump during development/qualification testing
• Support ongoing design improvements to turbopump assemblies and/or sub systems including manufacturing improvements to reduce cost and lead time of components 

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: 

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline
• 10+ years of experience in the design of turbomachinery

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Master's degree or higher in mechanical engineering or similar
• Power/Process plant turbomachinery design experience
• Strong understanding of pump hydrodynamic/aerodynamic design and fundamentals of turbomachinery (mechanical design, and hands on experience with turbomachinery hardware build)
• Strong understanding of thermodynamics, compressible and incompressible flow, thermochemistry mechanics and/or materials
• Experience with turbomachinery manufacturing and design of manufacturability
• Professional experience using Siemens NX (Unigraphics) or other CAD packages
• Experience with Ansys (CFX, mechanical, thermal)
• Understanding of engineering fundamentals and the ability to develop first principles based models and quick estimates
• Experience at a nimble engineering organization or in a highly technical position that required a scrappy, entrepreneurial manner to accomplish tasks with tight time or budget constraints

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS: 

• Willingness to travel to vendors/partners and Valar Atomics' nuclear site in Utah
• Willingness to work extended hours and weekends as needed