Thea Energy

Thea Energy

Senior Plasma Control Engineer

Kearny, NJ · Senior

Sponsorship not specified$120k-$160kDetected 35 days ago
PythonC++MATLABAlgorithmsGitDockerKafkaMachine LearningTensorFlowPyTorchData EngineeringElectrical EngineeringPower ElectronicsSimulinkCollaborationSCADA

About the role

  • This role sits in the Electrical Engineering and Controls Systems (EECS) team and works day to day with plasma physics, diagnostics, and plant control engineers to bridge plasma physics objectives with plasma control and plant control implementation.
  • You will also contribute to subsystem digital twins and data pipelines that enable model development, validation, and deployment.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, test, and iterate plasma control algorithms for Eos PCS, including multi-rate feedback, supervisory logic, and constraint handling.
  • Develop and deploy real-time state estimation and multi-diagnostic data fusion to produce control-grade plasma state, including robust profile reconstruction and regime indicators suitable for closed-loop operation.
  • Develop anomaly detection and early-warning indicators across plasma and plant signals, with clear thresholds and graded mitigation actions.
  • Partner with plasma physicists to translate physics goals into control objectives, observables, constraints, and validation tests.
  • Design and maintain digital twin models for plasma control loops and coupled plant subsystems, enabling simulation, optimization, and controller development and validation.
  • Build model validation workflows, including post-shot reconstruction, scenario sweeps, sensitivity studies, and uncertainty-aware comparisons against experimental data
  • Build and maintain data pipelines for time-series control and diagnostic data, including labeling, archiving, and training and inference workflows.
  • Plasma Control Engineer to develop and deploy novel plasma control algorithms for the Eos stellarator, with a strong emphasis on AI and ML assisted control, real-time state estimation, and digital twins.

Requirements

  • 3 or more years of experience developing control algorithms, ML models, or real-time scientific software for complex physical systems.
  • Experience with time-series data processing, signal conditioning, system identification, and validation on real data.
  • Working knowledge of modern control methods, such as state estimation, constrained optimization, MPC, and robust control.
  • Ability to occasionally lift up to 50 lbs.
  • Willingness to occasionally travel or work required nights/weekends/on-call.
  • Ability to work in a facility that contains industrial hazards including heat, cold, noise, fumes, strong magnets, high voltage, high current, pressure systems, and cryogenics.
  • The company is reinventing the stellarator using computer-controlled arrays of planar coils thereby replacing the intricate, complex modular magnets required in all other stellarator architectures.

Nice to have

  • Experience with plasma control, stellarators or tokamaks, or adjacent fields such as accelerators and large scientific infrastructure.
  • Prior work on digital twins, real-time simulators, or physics-informed ML for physical systems.
  • Experience integrating with experimental control and data systems (for example EPICS, MDSplus, SCADA, OPC UA).
  • Familiarity with low-latency deployment and inference engines such as ONNX Runtime and TensorRT.
  • Background in any of the following plant subsystems is a plus: power electronics, cryogenics, vacuum and pumping, high-power RF systems, and safety controls.
  • Tools and platforms:
  • Languages and frameworks: Python, MATLAB, C++, PyTorch or TensorFlow or JAX, Jupyter
  • Data infrastructure: MDSplus, EPICS, HDF5, InfluxDB, OPC UA, Kafka or ZeroMQ

Skills

  • Python, MATLAB, C++, PyTorch or TensorFlow or JAX, Jupyter

Compensation

  • Salary range $120,000-$160,000

Benefits

  • Comprehensive health benefits (e.g. medical/dental/vision)
  • Employee equity stock options
  • version control, test coverage, reproducible environments, and operational readiness documentation.

Equal opportunity

  • Thea Energy is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a company of diverse backgrounds.
  • By creating a diverse environment, we will bring new ideas and approaches to solving some of the world's hardest (and most important) problems.
  • All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, family or marital status, age, disability, veteran's status, or other characteristic protected by applicable laws and regulations.
Apply directly at Thea Energy →Create a free account for alerts like thisView Thea Energy immigration profile

This listing is sourced directly from Thea Energy's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.