Software Engineer - Backend / Embedded

About Us

At Antares, our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. We're fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we're building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially, underwater, and in space.

Formed in 2023, the Antares team hails from SpaceX, The White House, MIT, Rigetti Computing, The Air Force, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Los Alamos, Idaho, and Oak Ridge. Antares has raised over $130M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has over $13M in government funding.

About the Role

Antares is seeking an Embedded Software Engineer (Linux) to develop a real-time control and monitoring software that forms the central nervous system of the reactor. This software manages system state, processes commands, handles telemetry, and coordinates communication across all reactor subsystems to ensure safe and reliable operation. This work enables precise control of reactor conditions, continuous data visibility, and robust response to off-nominal events.

With our First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) reactor design underway, you will help define and implement the next generation of our control and data infrastructure. You will work closely with controls, electrical, and safety engineering teams to design, test, and validate software that interacts directly with sensors, custom electronics, and supervisory systems. Your work will ensure that the reactor operates safely, efficiently, and as intended from prototype through deployment.

Roles and Responsibilities :

• Owner of middleware between application and embedded code to operate the reactor.
• Develop and maintain real-time reactor software applications executing on Linux-based computers, responsible for C&DH (command handling), and state management.
• Design and implement test and control that exercise subsystem modes, fault management / injection, and autonomous behaviors.
• Build and maintain the network and communications stack for inter-process and inter-computer communication (e.g., TCP / UDP, CAN over Ethernet, DDS, ZeroMQ, or custom protocols).
• Develop software to receive and process uplinked commands, validate them, trigger state transitions, and produce structured telemetry.
• Interface with and develop hardware abstraction layers (HALs) and system services to exchange data with off-the-shelf components (DAQs, power supplies, etc.), sensors, controllers, and control algorithms.
• Collaborate closely with software, electrical, and controls teams to ensure software correctly integrates with underlying hardware and real-time networks.
• Write and maintain system-level test frameworks, simulations, and HIL environments to validate command / telemetry and state machine behavior.
• Participate in software and design reviews, code reviews, and contribute to the definition of interface control documents (ICDs) and communication schemas.
• Contribute to system performance optimization, and fault tolerance

Basic Qualifications :

Preferred Skills & Experience :

Location

Culture

At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document's set of values-here are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful :

Equal Opportunity

Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, competence, and qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin / ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.