Senior Software Engineer, Hardware Test Platform

About the role

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 Role Antares is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build the software platform our engineers use to test and validate reactor components and subsystems. You will develop reusable infrastructure that connects to hardware, automates test procedures, captures synchronized data, and enables live monitoring and post-test analysis. You will own the platform from software architecture through deployment on working test stands. Your work will enable engineers to integrate new equipment, execute repeatable tests, and investigate results without developing a separate software stack for every setup. You will work closely with test, electrical, controls, embedded software, and hardware engineering teams to translate testing needs into reliable tools. This role requires strong software engineering fundamentals and hands-on experience integrating software with physical equipment. Roles and Responsibilities - Architect and build a shared platform for hardware interfaces, test execution, data acquisition, live monitoring, and analysis. - Develop reusable drivers and adapters for sensors, data acquisition systems, controllers, laboratory instruments, and custom electronics. - Build a test sequencing framework that supports configurable procedures, equipment state management, pass/fail criteria, and repeatable execution. - Develop operator interfaces for configuring tests, issuing commands, monitoring measurements, and diagnosing failures. - Implement command validation, equipment limits, fault handling, and recovery behavior in coordination with hardware and controls engineers. - Capture synchronized measurements and logs alongside test parameters, hardware configurations, calibration information, and software versions. - Build tools for reviewing test runs, comparing performance, identifying anomalies, and generating reports. - Support reliable operation on local test stations, including interrupted communications, device failures, and network outages. - Establish software testing, version control, deployment, and documentation practices that support multiple test stands and users. - Participate in hardware bring-up, test campaigns, and root-cause investigations, using feedback from engineers and operators to improve the platform. Basic Qualifications - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. - Demonstrated experience owning production software from architecture through deployment and maintenance. - Strong technical and problem-solving skills, with proficiency in at least one modern programming language. - Experience building hardware-facing software using asynchronous programming, structured data models, automated testing, and maintainable API design. - Hands-on experience integrating software with instruments, sensors, controllers, data acquisition systems, or other physical hardware. - Familiarity with hardware communication interfaces such as serial, TCP/IP, CAN, Modbus, SCPI, or VISA. - Experience capturing, storing, and processing measurement data. - Strong debugging skills across software, communications, and hardware integration. - Ability to translate engineering needs into clear requirements and deliver tools used by multidisciplinary teams. Preferred Skills & Experience - Experience building test automation platforms, hardware-in-the-loop systems, or automated manufacturing test infrastructure. - Experience developing web or desktop interfaces for equipment control and live data visualization. - Familiarity with time-series databases, streaming telemetry, timestamp synchronization, and test data management. - Experience with laboratory instrumentation and industrial equipment, including power supplies, electronic loads, thermocouples, pressure transducers, and programmable controllers. - Experience with simulation, device emulation, and fault injection for validating hardware-facing software. - Familiarity with Linux, containerized deployments, CI/CD, and software distribution across multiple test stations. - Experience supporting traceability, configuration management, and controlled test procedures in aerospace, energy, industrial, or other high-reliability environments. 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.