Staff Mechanical Design Engineer

Quantum Leap Energy (QLE) is hiring a Staff Mechanical Design Engineer to join its Engineering team and develop first-of-a-kind hardware for its isotope separation technology. The role owns mechanism design, precision assemblies, safety-by-design decisions, CAD baselines, and coordination across simulation, experimental, manufacturing, and safety workstreams in a regulated environment.

Responsibilities:

• Own the Mechanical Baseline: Own the detailed 3D CAD baseline for mechanisms and precision assemblies – models, sub-assemblies, drawings, and released documentation – from concept through to manufacture
• Mechanism Development: Design motion-critical hardware: kinematics and load paths, actuation and drive selection, bearings, seals, linkages, and end-stops, sized against duty cycle, wear, backlash, and service life
• Tolerance & Precision: Drive tolerance stack-up analysis and GD&T (ASME Y14.5) so that alignment, repeatability, and assembly are achieved by dimensioning rather than by fitting on the bench
• Design for Manufacture, Assembly & Maintenance: Design parts that can be made, assembled, inspected, and maintained – including in constrained, shielded, or remotely handled environments
• Configuration Control: Maintain disciplined PDM/PLM practice – revision control, release states, and change records – so every downstream team has an unambiguous version to work from
• Process Definition: Contribute to and maintain Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs) and Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) where mechanisms interface with process systems. This is a supporting element of the role; the primary output is CAD
• Design Out the Hazard: Apply the hierarchy of controls at the concept stage, eliminating or reducing hazards through inherent design choice – geometry, materials, mass, stored-energy limits, and separation – in preference to active engineered or administrative controls
• Inherent Safety Characteristics: Use passive and geometric means to bound the consequences of failure: safe-by-geometry configurations, limited inventories, passive heat removal paths, and physical constraints that make the unsafe state unreachable
• Fail-Safe Behavior: Define the de-energized state of every mechanism. Loss of power, air, signal, or operator attention should leave hardware in a known safe position, with mechanical interlocks and poka-yoke preferred over software dependency
• Safety Assessment Contribution: Generate the design evidence supporting hazard identification and safety assessment (HAZOP, FMEA, criticality and ALARP arguments), and drive the resulting actions back into the CAD baseline rather than into a procedure
• Codes & Standards: Ensure designs meet relevant codes – ASME Y14.5, and ASME BPVC / B31.3 where pressure boundaries are involved – alongside nuclear quality and safety expectations such as ASME NQA-1 and defense-in-depth principles
• Hold the Design Basis: Maintain a single controlled geometric and requirements baseline that simulation, experimental, and manufacturing teams all work from, so concurrent activity stays traceable to one revision
• Simulation Interface: Prepare, defeature, and issue geometry for FEA, CFD, thermal, and neutronics analysis; agree boundary conditions and modeling assumptions up front; and translate analysis outcomes into design changes
• Experimental Interface: Design rigs, fixtures, and test articles for experimental teams, ensuring test hardware is representative of the analyzed configuration and that instrumentation access is designed in from the start
• Reconcile Competing Requirements: Manage the reality that simulation, experiment, and production each need something different from the same basis – a simplified geometry, an instrumented one, a manufacturable one – and keep those variants deliberate, documented, and reconciled rather than divergent
• Change Management: Run design reviews and change impact assessments so a revision propagates cleanly to every concurrent workstream without silently invalidating an in-flight analysis or test campaign
• Physics-to-Hardware Interface: Collaborate with physicists and process engineers to translate theoretical and process requirements into manufacturable hardware
• Vendor & Fabrication Support: Qualify suppliers, review shop drawings and weld procedures, and support first article inspection and Factory Acceptance Testing
• Mentorship: Mentor engineers in mechanism design, GD&T, safety-by-design thinking, and root-cause troubleshooting
• Remote Working Discipline: Operate effectively within a distributed team – documenting decisions, communicating asynchronously, and keeping the design record self-explanatory

Requirements:

• 8-10+ years of progressive experience in mechanical design, with a demonstrated portfolio of mechanisms and precision assemblies taken from concept to working hardware in regulated or high-consequence industries (Nuclear, Aerospace, Defense, Semiconductor, Medical Devices)
• Kinematic design, load path definition, and mechanism synthesis for repeatable, life-limited motion
• Tolerance stack-up analysis and fluency in ASME Y14.5 (GD&T) for precision assemblies
• Selection and integration of bearings, drives, actuators, and dynamic seals, with material selection informed by wear, galling, fatigue, and environment
• Demonstrable experience designing hazards out at source – applying the hierarchy of controls, passive and fail-safe design, and participating in HAZOP, FMEA, or equivalent safety assessments
• Expert in 3D CAD (e.g. SolidWorks/Inventor/CREO) and disciplined in PDM/PLM data management
• Proven track record working alongside simulation and experimental teams, supporting parallel workstreams that draw different requirements from a shared design basis
• Able to read, mark up, and contribute to PFDs and P&IDs, and to understand where a mechanism sits within the wider process system
• Comfortable in a shop, lab, or test facility during site visits, able to physically troubleshoot hardware and lead root cause analysis when first-of-a-kind mechanisms fail
• Ability to thrive in a multi-disciplinary environment, effectively communicating complex engineering concepts to scientists, analysts, project managers, and technicians
• Capable of managing complex technical workstreams with minimal oversight in a remote setting, reporting directly to the Head of Engineering
• Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering or a related field
• Remote: This role is remote. You'll be provided with a working setup that supports CAD-heavy design work and reliable participation in design reviews across US time zones
• Travel: Limited travel is expected a few times per year – typically for design reviews, vendor and fabrication visits, and commissioning
• Design experience within a nuclear regulatory and quality framework – for example NRC, ONR, or IAEA-aligned regimes – including work governed by ASME NQA-1, 10 CFR 50 Appendix B, or an equivalent safety case and design substantiation process
• Familiarity with criticality safety by geometry and the design constraints it imposes on vessel and mechanism layout
• Experience designing for gloveboxes, hot cells, shielded environments, or remote maintenance and decontamination
• Master's Degree or PhD in Mechanical Engineering or Physics
• Professional Engineer (PE) License
• Hands-on experience with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or CFD packages (e.g. ANSYS, COMSOL, STAR-CCM+), sufficient to interrogate and challenge analysis results
• Experience with High Vacuum (HV/UHV), cryogenics, or aggressive/corrosive chemical environments, including gaseous halide media
• Project Management Professional (PMP) or process improvement (e.g., Lean Six Sigma) certifications are a plus