VP of Engineering

VP of Engineering

Why Nuclearn.ai Nuclearn.ai builds AIpowered software for the nuclear and utility industriestools that keep critical infrastructure reliable, efficient, and safe. Our platform integrates AIdriven workflow, documentation, and research automation and is already used at 60+ nuclear reactors across North America . Were now looking for a handson, systemsminded VP of Engineering to turn that momentum into disciplined, reliable delivery across software, hardware/infrastructure, cybersecurity, and quality .

Youll own the engineering strategy endtoend, shape the org, raise the bar on reliability and security, and ship features and integrations that matter to real plants.

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

Youll report to the founders and lead a multidiscipline organization spanning Software , Hardware/Infrastructure , Cybersecurity , and Quality Assurance (QA/V&V) . Youll define the engineering strategy, hire and coach leaders, establish worldclass practices, and deliver productiongrade AI in a regulated, customerintegrated environment. This is a working VP role where youll set architecture, get into the weeds on incidents and design reviews, and model how we blend modern software engineering with productiongrade AI and secure deployments.

• Design the org across backend, frontend, platform/SRE, hardware/infra, cybersecurity, and QA ; define interfaces and ownership boundaries that mirror the architecture.
• Hire, onboard, and coach ICs and managers; set clear growth paths, performance expectations, and succession plans.
• Run the rooms: weekly planning, architecture/design sessions, AI+UX charrettes, postincident RCAs, incident drills, and crossteam release reviews.
• Build an AIenabled engineering culturesafe and effective use of AI pair programming, code generation, test synthesis, and design assistance.

• Be handson in the codebase, especially early on - contributing directly to critical features, reviews, and infrastructure while building and mentoring the team.
• Own SDLC and release management (branching, feature flags, safe rollbacks) across services and clients.
• Institute typed APIs and schemamigration discipline (backfills, idempotency, partitioning).
• Drive Sentry triage and errorbudget/SLOs; implement retries, backpressure, DLQs, and circuit breakers.
• Embed AI in the toolchain: automated test generation, staticanalysis + AI code review prompts, releasenote drafting, log summarization, and postmortem drafting.
• Define and publish customervisible reliability metrics (uptime, success rates, SLA adherence).

• Own the strategy for edge/onprem and cloud/hybrid deployments common in utility environments (including constrained/airgapped scenarios).
• Lead buildvsbuy for edge connectors/appliances and plantside integrations; oversee vendor selection, BOMs, lifecycle management, and spares.
• Establish infrastructure standards: highavailability topologies, disaster recovery, backup/restore, configuration management, and environment parity.
• Ensure robust networking patterns for utility/OT integration (segmentation, least privilege, managed ingress/egress, secure update channels).
• Introduce telemetry for fleet health (hardware status, throughput, queue depth) and capacity planning.

• Embed secure SDLC and change control that satisfy SOC 2/ISO 27001 without slowing delivery; partner with leadership on roadmapaligned controls.
• Define deployment hardening for customer sites (key management, identity/SSO, network trust boundaries, audit trails, leastprivilege access).
• Support vendor risk reviews, DPAs in MSAs, and enterprise security questionnaires.

• Build a lightweight but rigorous QMS for software and hardware/edge artifacts: test plans, change control, and release signoffs.
• Expand automated test coverage (unit, contract, integration, E2E) and nonfunctional testing (load, resilience, failover).
• Define quality metrics: defect escape rate, MTTR, change failure rate, test reliability, and verification completeness.
• Ensure evidence capture for audits and customer onboarding (test records, validation summaries, configuration baselines).

• Lead robust integrations with DevonWay, Maximo, and other enterprise systems .
• Build safe, traceable reprocessing (versioned transforms, replayable queues, full lineage).
• Stand up retrieval pipelines for inproduct AI.

• Rethink UX with AI: design copilotstyle flows in CAP AI and AtomAssist that propose, simulate, explain, then apply - with humanintheloop gates and diffbased approvals.
• Partner with Design to create AIfirst UI patterns (naturallanguage to action, drafttodiff, semantic search across customer content) aligned to utility workflows and approvals.

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

• Partner with Product on quarterly planning and the toward 100% automation roadmap.
• Work with Customer Success on renewals (license entitlements, usage, 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, security posture, AIassist KPIs, QA/V&V status).

• Reliability: Cut a noisy class of Sentry errors by 30%+ via task idempotency, DLQs, and AIassisted log triage.
• Automation guardrails: Roll out simulate review apply gating for CAP automations with dryrun diffs, explanations, and full audit trails.
• Data pipeline: Deliver a OneNote AtomAssist connector: tabular ingest, strict schema validation, safe reprocessing, lineage.
• Hardware/infra: Define the appliance reference architecture (secure update channel, health telemetry, DR), pilot at a customer site, and publish runbooks.
• Cyber: Support upcoming ISO-27001 and SOC-2 audits.
• QA: Establish the QMS skeleton (requirements trace, test plan templates, release checklist), and add automated regression to CI.
• Org: Fill priority roles (e.g., FullStack, SRE/Platform, Security Engineer, QA) and level up existing teams with crisp ownership.

• Have led 5 - 20+ engineers across multiple disciplines at a startup serving regulated enterprises.
• Are a playercoach : you can dive into FastAPI/React/Postgres/Celery, reason about infra topologies, and still scale the org.
• Care about correctness and safety: typed contracts, migrations with backfills, idempotent jobs, V&V that catches sharp edges.
• Have shipped AIpowered features and know how to measure and improve trust (evals, guardrails, humanintheloop).
• 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.

• Experience with AI Agent Ops, RAG/data pipelines, vector search, feature stores, and LLM training operations (prompt/versioning, evals, monitoring).
• Background in nuclear/utility or other safetycritical domains (aviation, meddevice, rail, O&G).
• SOC 2/ISO 27001 experience; familiarity with utility security expectations.
• Familiarity with Maximo, DevonWay, Microsoft 365 integrations.

Frontend: React, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
Backend: Python (FastAPI)
Data/Infra: PostgreSQL, SQLite; Redis, RabbitMQ, Celery; Docker/Podman, Kubernetes; GitHub Actions
Observability: Sentry, Netdata; (growing OpenTelemetry footprint)
Quality: PyTest, Cypress; CIdriven test automation and V&V evidence capture
Security/Cyber (representative): dependency/SBOM scanning, SIEM/EDR, secrets management, vulnerability management, identity/SSO
Edge/Onprem (where applicable): hardened images, secure update channels, fleet telemetry, backup/restore, DR runbooks

• Base salary: $216k - $233k
• Equity: 0.16% - 0.40%
• Bonus: 15%
• Benefits: Unlimited PTO, health/dental/vision insurance

Fulltime, salaried. Hybrid at Phoenix HQ (80% inoffice; Wednesdays remote). Occasional travel to customer sites, conferences, or auditors as needed.

1. 20min founder intro to trade context and assess mutual fit
2. Leadership & systems deep dive (org design, SDLC/reliability, cyber/QA strategy)
3. Team panel + working session (design review, incident/RCA, or architecture exercise)
4. Final discussion on 90day plan, success metrics, and boardlevel communication

We aim to move from first chat to decision quickly.

Ready to lead engineering across software, hardware/infrastructure, cybersecurity, and quality to keep critical infrastructure running? Wed love to meet you.