Embedded Controls Engineer at Antares in Los Angeles, CA

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. The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy. About the Team We are seeking an Embedded Controls Engineer to own and expand the control software for a power conversion system (PCS). This is a hands-on model-based controls and embedded-software role responsible for evolving an existing Simulink implementation into a robust real-time application that supports increasingly complex system behavior and operational requirements. The ideal candidate has developed and deployed model-based control software for automotive powertrains, motorsport, high-performance propulsion, aerospace, or similarly demanding real-time electromechanical systems. The PCS behaves more like a complex powertrain control system than a conventional industrial controller: multiple operating states, fast-changing conditions, extensive sensing and diagnostics, fault management, degraded modes, and real-time hardware interfaces. This engineer will work across electrical, mechanical, systems, software, and test teams to simulate, validate, deploy, calibrate, and troubleshoot the control system. Roles and Responsibilities: - Own the architecture, development, validation, deployment, and long-term health of the PCS control application. - Develop, modify, and maintain model-based application software using MATLAB, Simulink, and Stateflow. - Establish and maintain a scalable Simulink architecture with reusable subsystems and libraries, and clearly defined signals, parameters, and interfaces. - Define execution rates, scheduling, I/O abstraction, and deterministic real-time behavior for the control application. - Design and tune closed-loop controls for power conversion and related thermal, electrical, or mechanical processes. - Develop controls including operating modes, sequencing, state machines, interlocks, limits, and transition logic. - Expand the existing controls implementation to support greater system complexity, additional operating modes, and degraded operation. - Perform mathematical modeling, simulation, and analysis of stability, dynamic response, operating limits, and transient and steady-state behavior. - Integrate sensor-plausibility capabilities and develop diagnostics for failed, degrading, or implausible sensors, including thermocouples. - Define fault responses, degraded operating behavior, and safe-state actions for sensor, actuator, and abnormal system conditions. - Develop and execute Model-in-the-Loop, Software-in-the-Loop, and Hardware-in-the-Loop testing, and support bench and system validation. - Instrument models and analyze simulation, bench, system-test, and logged operational data to diagnose and improve control behavior. - Support model-based code generation, build, deployment, and integration of Simulink models on real-time PCS hardware. - Troubleshoot control behavior during simulation, commissioning, test, and system operation. - Document control architecture, algorithms, interfaces, assumptions, calibration logic, and validation results. - Support software used for both test activities and Mark-1 operation. Basic Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Controls Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field. - 3+ years of experience developing and deploying model-based embedded controls for automotive powertrain, motorsport, propulsion, aerospace, or similarly demanding real-time systems. - Strong MATLAB and Simulink experience, including architecture and maintenance of production-scale models and model-based code-generation workflows. - Experience taking controls from simulation through Model-in-the-Loop / Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop or bench testing, and deployment onto real-time embedded hardware. Preferred Skills & Experience: - Direct experience with McLaren Applied / Motion Applied control systems and tooling, including TAG ECUs, vTAG, ATLAS, or related Simulink-based application-development workflows, is strongly preferred. - Strong understanding of control theory, dynamic systems, feedback-control design, diagnostics, and state-based supervisory logic. - Ability to take ownership of an existing controls implementation and work effectively across controls, electrical, mechanical, software, systems, and test disciplines. - Experience developing powertrain, hybrid, energy-management, or other embedded controls in professional motorsport, high-performance automotive, or aerospace programs. - Experience with Simulink Coder, Embedded Coder, Stateflow, or comparable production model-based code-generation toolchains. - Experience with multi-rate models, deterministic execution, task scheduling, model references and libraries, and parameter or calibration management. - Experience with calibration, instrumentation, telemetry, data logging, and test workflows common to automotive, motorsport, or aerospace controls development. - Experience with embedded communications and vehicle networks such as CAN, and with integrating sensors, actuators, and real-time I/O. - Experience developing sensor plausibility checks, diagnostics, fault detection, safe-state behavior, and degraded operating modes. - Experience analyzing noisy, drifting, failed, or otherwise unreliable signals involving temperature, voltage, current, pressure, flow, speed, or torque measurements. - Familiarity with version control, model configuration management, requirements traceability, automated testing, and disciplined embedded-software development practices. 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: - Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, conflicting policies, perverse incentives, and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. “If you want to be certain, then you are apt to be obsolete.” Over-optimizing the components often degrades the system - Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle - Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many, even experts, will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies, by definition, must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before, and never choose to do something because that's “how it's always been done” - Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer, user, or stakeholder face to face, even if that means hopping on a plane. If you can’t make it, find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere, but we believe teams are built in person, and aim to maximize our time together - Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption 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 https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987.