Reporting to the CEO and working closely with Company stakeholders, The VP Engineering is a newly created senior leadership role that provides strategic and technical leadership for all technology maturation, hardware design, and engineering activities supporting GLE's commercialization strategy.
This position holds ultimate design authority for the production facility, systems, and equipment, ensuring that business-driven product requirements are translated into mature, robust technical specifications. The role drives the parallel maturation of technology, prototype validation, manufacturing processes, plant engineering, and safety-by-design principles to enable a seamless transition from prototyping to a deployable commercial-scale plant. By maintaining clear technical accountability and disciplined trade-off processes, the VP Engineering ensures that technical decisions are optimized for performance, cost, schedule, and regulatory compliance.
Roles and Responsibilities:
- Oversee the core technology maturation program, including conceptual design, detailed hardware engineering, system integration, and iterative design reviews.
- Define and maintain the technology maturation roadmap and technical risk register from TRL 6 through TRL 9, including MRL alignment, gating criteria, and success metrics.
- Prioritize technical workstreams to maximize FOAK technical risk reduction, balancing initial performance and reliability vs. speed to market.
- Develop and execute strategies for manufacturability, process scale-up, supply-chain readiness, and industrialization of critical components and assemblies.
- Collaborate closely with the projects team to align manufacturing requirements with overall project execution and cost baselines.
- Establish and maintain a robust configuration management system and technical baseline that serves as the single source of truth for production facility designs.
- Provide design authority and leadership for the overall production facility architecture, balance-of-plant systems, process flow diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), and equipment specifications.
- Ensure facility and system designs meet performance, reliability, and availability targets while maturing in parallel with technology development.
- Champion "safety by design" principles by leading integrated safety analyses, hazard identification, probabilistic risk assessments, and development of the safety basis documentation.
- Embed safety and regulatory requirements into all design, testing, and manufacturing activities from the earliest stages.
- Oversee operation of all test facilities, prototype assembly, commissioning, data acquisition, diagnostics, and performance validation campaigns.
- Ensure rigorous test plans, failure mode analysis, and lessons-learned processes are institutionalized to de-risk technology prior to full-scale deployment.
- Serve as the final technical decision authority on design trade-offs, ensuring that business and product requirements drive all technology maturation efforts.
- Establish and chair key technical governance forums (e.g., Design Review Board, Change Control Board) and maintain strong interfaces with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless handoffs and alignment.
- Build, mentor, and retain a high-performing engineering organization; foster a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and accountability.
- Represent the company's technical baseline with regulators, investors, and external stakeholders as required.
Qualifications and Experience:
- Bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or a closely related field; Master's or PhD strongly preferred.
- 15+ years of progressive experience in engineering and technology development, with at least 8-10 years in a senior leadership role (e.g., Director of Engineering or equivalent) in the nuclear, advanced energy, aerospace, or complex hardware/systems industry.
- Demonstrated track record of leading technology maturation from concept through prototype testing to industrialization, including hands-on experience with hardware design, system integration, and test facility operations.
- Strong background in safety-by-design principles, integrated safety analysis, and embedding regulatory requirements into technical baselines.
- Experience establishing and maintaining design authority, configuration management, and technical governance processes in a regulated environment.
- Proven ability to build, mentor, and scale high-performing multidisciplinary engineering teams while fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and accountability.
- Familiarity with nuclear regulatory frameworks (e.g., NRC guidelines) and experience representing technical positions to regulators, investors, or external stakeholders is highly desirable.
- Excellent strategic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and communication skills, with the ability to balance technical trade-offs against business, schedule, and cost drivers.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and iteration inherent in FOAK development.
- High accountability mindset with bias toward execution.
- Active DOE/NRC Q-clearance or equivalent (DOD TS).
