About the Position

Systems Engineer

Everett, WA

About Helion

We are a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, with the mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. Our vision is a world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone.

Since Helion's founding in 2013, we have raised $1.5 billion from long-time investors such as Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricorn Investment Group as well as new investors including Thrive Capital, LightSpeed Venture Capital, SoftBank, and others to propel us forward. Our current prototype, Polaris, has reached record-breaking plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (13 keV). Helion is continuing to iterate and on the path to the world's first fusion power plant, Orion.

This is a pivotal time to join Helion. You will tackle real-world challenges with a team that prizes urgency, rigor, ownership, and a commitment to delivering hard truths – values essential to achieving what no one has before. Together, we will change the future of energy, because the world can't wait.

Responsibilities

As a Systems Engineer, you will:

Develop and maintain Helion's top-level plant requirements, ensuring clear, traceable decomposition from plant-level mission objectives down to subsystem and component requirements.
Utilize trade studies that inform major plant architecture decisions, presenting clear technical rationale to engineering leadership.
Develop and maintain Interface Control Documents (ICDs) that define the electrical, mechanical, controls, and data interfaces between plant subsystems and with suppliers.
Conduct and facilitate design reviews (PDR/CDR-style and informal) at the plant level, ensuring requirements, interfaces, and risks are surfaced and dispositioned early.
Identify, assess, and track plant-level integration risks, and drive mitigation strategies and resolution across functional teams.
Drive configuration management and change control for plant-level requirements and baselines, evaluating the cross-system impact of proposed design changes and recommending disposition.
Partner with electrical, mechanical, controls, test, science, and business teams to ensure subsystem designs remain aligned with plant-level intent as designs mature.
Drive technical consensus across functional teams on plant-level decisions, and represent the plant's technical position in program and leadership reviews.
Scale Helion's systems engineering processes - requirements management, ICD control, and design review cadence - to meet the needs of an organization moving from prototype to production power plants.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
3+ years of experience in systems engineering, with demonstrated ownership of requirements, architecture, or interface definition on complex plant or hardware systems.
Proven experience decomposing high-level plant or mission requirements into traceable, verifiable subsystem requirements.
Proven experience authoring and maintaining ICDs across multiple engineering disciplines.
Experience developing and executing verification and validation plans against system-level requirements.
Strong technical writing and communication skills, with the ability to influence design decisions across disciplines without direct authority.
Demonstrated ability to drive technical consensus and decisions across cross-functional engineering teams.
Comfort working across electrical, mechanical, controls, science, business, and software domains without being deeply expert in all of them.
Demonstrated ability to operate in fast-paced development environments requiring both engineering rigor and speed.

Nice to Have

Experience in aerospace, nuclear, energy systems, or other complex, safety-critical, first-of-kind hardware or plant programs.
Experience with requirements management and PLM tooling (Jama, DOORS, Teamcenter, or similar).
Experience with risk identification, tracking, and mitigation on complex engineering programs.
Experience applying system safety and reliability methods, including FMEA, FMECA, or fault tree analysis.
Track record of mentoring engineers toward stronger systems engineering practice.

We Offer

Our total compensation package includes benefits, including but not limited to:

Medical, Dental, and Vision plans for employees and their families
31 Days of PTO (21 vacation days and 10 sick days)
10 Paid holidays, plus company-wide winter break
Up to 5% employer 401(k) match
Short term disability, long term disability, and life insurance
Paid parental leave and support (up to 16 weeks)
Annual wellness stipend

About the Company

Helion is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the interview process, please let us know.

Systems Engineer

Job description