[Hiring] Senior Engineer, Scientific Software and Developer Platform @Kairos Power

Role Description

Kairos Power is looking for a Senior Scientific Software and Developer Platform Engineer to work within a small software and infrastructure team that supports the needs of our design, research, and development organizations. This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You will architect and build the scientific software, developer tooling, and delivery systems that nuclear engineers and computational scientists use to design and analyze nuclear power systems.

• The work spans Python and C++ development, computational modeling, build and packaging systems, reproducible artifact delivery, CI/CD, containerization, software quality assurance, and high-performance computing workflows.
• You will set software architecture direction, establish the design and maintainability standards the group works to, and raise engineering practice through design review, code review, and mentoring.
• The group favors simple, proportionate designs assembled from standard, well-supported technologies, and this role is expected to be a leading voice for that standard.
• Success means writing and shaping software that engineers other than its original author can operate, extend, and maintain.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, physics, mathematics, computational science, or a related technical field, or equivalent combination of education and practical experience.
• 5+ years of relevant software engineering experience, including experience developing scientific, engineering, computational, or other technically complex software.
• Strong and demonstrable experience developing scientific or engineering software, with depth in both Python and C++.
• Experience implementing computational modeling methods, numerical methods, or comparable quantitative algorithms.
• Demonstrated software architecture experience, including the ability to decompose a problem, define interfaces, and reason about maintainability, performance, and long-term cost.
• Experience with automated testing, including unit and integration testing with frameworks such as PyTest or GoogleTest.
• Proficiency with Git, Linux, Bash, and SSH.
• Experience mentoring engineers and conducting design and code review, together with a demonstrated ability to accept and apply design feedback.
• A track record of building software that other engineers can operate, extend, and maintain, supported by clear documentation and deliberate knowledge transfer.

Requirements

• Own software architecture for internally developed engineering tools, selecting data structures, interfaces, and algorithms that match the actual problem rather than an anticipated one.
• Profile and optimize performance where a measurable requirement justifies the work, and document the resulting characteristics.
• Collaborate with nuclear and other non-software engineers to define software projects based on their needs for tools that support the primary mission of the company.
• Own CI/CD for internally developed software using GitHub Actions or comparable systems, including automated testing, quality gates, and controlled release.
• Build reproducible build and packaging pipelines for Python packages, Conda environments, and C++ binaries and libraries, including compiler and dependency management.
• Own artifact publication and versioning, so that consumers can determine exactly what they are running and reproduce it later.
• Diagnose and resolve compilation, dependency, environment, and runtime problems across the scientific software stack.
• Establish and maintain container build and runtime patterns for Docker and Apptainer across development and high-performance computing use.
• Uphold internal software quality assurance requirements, and build the automation that makes compliance a property of the pipeline rather than a manual step.
• Define the artifacts, records, and gates required for controlled software delivery, and make them reproducible from the build system.
• Support software quality audits with evidence generated by tooling rather than assembled by hand.
• Develop and support high-performance computing user workflows, including Slurm scheduling, Open OnDemand interactive access, MPI, and GPU computing.
• Improve the day-to-day experience of the engineers and scientists who use these platforms, and reduce the friction in their modeling and simulation workflows.
• Build self-service engineering workflows and documented paths that let users solve common problems without opening a request.
• Establish design, documentation, and maintainability standards that other teams use to develop and deploy code.
• Review software produced across the group, including internal applications, so that no system depends on a single author.
• Mentor engineers, transfer knowledge deliberately, and remove single-person dependencies through documentation and shared ownership.
• Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions, and select standard, well-supported libraries and tools over custom frameworks unless a requirement clearly demands otherwise.
• Choose the smallest design that meets the actual requirement, and identify and retire technical debt, premature abstraction, and unnecessary complexity.
• Participate in the team’s engineering help queue for issues that require deep software expertise, and communicate resolutions clearly to the engineers who reported them.

Benefits

• 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)