Systems Engineering Manager

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has the fastest, lowest cost path to commercial fusion energy.

CFS collaborates with MIT to leverage decades of research combined with groundbreaking new high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology. HTS magnets will enable compact fusion power plants that can be constructed faster and at lower cost. Our mission is to deploy these power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. To that end, CFS has assembled a team of leaders in tough tech, fusion science, and manufacturing with a track record of rapid execution. Supported by the world’s leading investors, CFS is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change. To implement this plan, we are looking to add dedicated people to the team who treat people well, improve our work by adding multifaceted perspectives and new ways of solving problems, have achieved outstanding results through a range of pursuits, and have skills and experience related to this role.

CFS seeks an outstanding engineering leader for our Systems Engineering team. This role will lead SPARC through its integration and commissioning life cycle. This role will also prepare for ARC and other major company programs through lessons learned, continuous process improvement, and ARC architecture work and systems engineering.

The systems engineering manager will lead a high performing team of engineers in accomplishment of defining high level requirements, requirements decomposition, flow down, design, verification & validation, integration, interfaces, commissioning support, and operations support. Candidate will be responsible for coordinating subordinate employee work assignments, performance assessments, salary, recruitment, selection and training, and recognition/disciplinary actions.

The systems engineering team also owns core CFS engineering processes: key decision and design trades; change control; risk identification; requirements management; project lifecycle and design reviews; design guidance and specifications; technical budgets; and many other engineering program functions. This role will report directly to the ARC Chief Engineer with direct reports to this leader including the systems engineering team. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills are critical to excel in this role.

The ideal candidate for this role will have an expert understanding of system design and system engineering practices on projects at the scale of SPARC, a multi-hundred person and $1+ billion program spanning 5+ years of development and 10 years of operations. They will have led systems engineering teams, tackled the toughest design trades, seen projects from development through operations, and instituted system engineering practices and processes in a lightweight manner at a growing company.