Software Engineer, DevOps/Infra

📋 Description

• • Join Helion, a groundbreaking fusion power company based in Everett, WA, at the forefront of developing the world's first fusion power plant. Our ambitious mission is to create a future powered by unlimited clean electricity, offering a sustainable and affordable energy solution for everyone. Since our inception in 2013, Helion has secured over $1 billion in funding from prominent investors, including Sam Altman, Mithril, Capricorn Investment Group, SoftBank, and Lightspeed, underscoring the significant potential and progress of our endeavors. Our previous prototype, Trenta, achieved remarkable milestones, including 10,000 high-power pulses and reaching plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius (9 keV). We are now actively operating Polaris, our next-generation prototype, which represents a crucial step towards realizing our ultimate goal of a commercial fusion power plant.
• • This is a pivotal moment to become an integral part of Helion's journey. You will be instrumental in addressing complex, real-world challenges alongside a dedicated team that embodies urgency, rigor, ownership, and an unwavering commitment to delivering critical insights. These core values are indispensable for achieving what has never been accomplished before. Together, we are poised to revolutionize the future of energy, driven by the understanding that the world cannot afford to wait for this vital transformation.
• • As a Software Engineer specializing in DevOps/Infra, you will play a critical role in enhancing, scaling, and expanding Helion’s proprietary in-house control and diagnostics systems. Your responsibilities will involve close collaboration with our Electrical Engineering and IT departments to architect and implement intelligent control systems, establish robust diagnostic infrastructure, and build resilient data pipelines essential for the operation of Helion’s fusion generators. This is a full-time, onsite position located at our Everett, WA facility, reporting directly to the Lead Electrical Engineer.
• • Key responsibilities include:
• • Collaborating intimately with our world-class Science and Engineering Teams to understand their needs and translate them into effective software solutions.
• • Designing, developing, and maintaining sophisticated graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that provide real-time logging and visualization of critical health and performance metrics for our fusion machines and experimental testbeds.
• • Implementing advanced software algorithms that seamlessly interface with and manage data from thousands of distributed sensors, ensuring high-fidelity data acquisition.
• • Taking full ownership of the software architecture, ensuring clean code organization, implementing rigorous version control best practices, developing efficient deployment tools, and establishing comprehensive testing frameworks.
• • Actively exploring, evaluating, and integrating cutting-edge time-series database technologies, such as InfluxDB and Grafana, to empower software users with powerful data analysis and visualization capabilities.
• • Investigating and implementing novel software solutions and methodologies to significantly accelerate the pace of research and development.
• • Applying fundamental engineering principles and a structured, method-based approach to tackle and resolve complex technical challenges inherent in fusion energy development.
• • Working across Hardware, Firmware, and Software disciplines to ensure seamless integration and efficient execution of complex systems.
• • Contributing to the optimization and scaling of data pipelines to handle the immense volume and velocity of data generated by our fusion experiments.
• • Developing and maintaining robust CI/CD pipelines to ensure rapid and reliable software deployments.
• • Implementing infrastructure as code principles using tools like Terraform to manage and provision cloud and on-premise resources.
• • Monitoring system performance, identifying bottlenecks, and implementing solutions to ensure high availability and reliability of critical infrastructure.
• • Participating in on-call rotations to provide support for production systems and respond to incidents.
• • Documenting system designs, configurations, and operational procedures to ensure knowledge transfer and maintainability.