Lead Nuclear Engineer

About the role

You will lead a small team of nuclear engineers for a utility or vendor organization, combining hands-on technical contribution with responsibility for your team's output quality and growth. The team executes design changes, analyses, and licensing work, and you ensure it all meets nuclear standards while developing each engineer. You will plan work, review products, remove obstacles, and still carry your own technical load. This role matters because engineering teams produce only what their lead demands and develops, and your leadership determines whether the team merely completes tasks or genuinely excels. You will also manage the interface between your team and other engineering disciplines, resolving priority conflicts before they impact schedules. Your hiring decisions will shape the team's capability for years, so you will select for both technical depth and safety culture fit. You will shield your engineers from organizational noise while keeping them connected to the plant's mission. Your performance feedback will be honest and timely, because engineers cannot grow on vague praise.

What you will achieve

• Deliver your team's full work scope on schedule with first-time quality rates above 90 percent.
• Develop each team member measurably, with at least two engineers advancing in capability or role per year.
• Lead design reviews that catch substantive issues early, reducing downstream rework 40 percent.
• Manage engineering resources across competing priorities without sacrificing quality or burning out the team.
• Maintain team technical standards documentation that new engineers use to reach productivity quickly.

What you will bring

Must-haves

• 7 to 10+ years in nuclear engineering with demonstrated technical excellence.
• Proven ability to lead engineers technically: planning work, reviewing products, and coaching performance.
• Strong project management skills for engineering scope: scheduling, prioritization, and risk management.
• Deep enough technical breadth to review work across multiple engineering disciplines credibly.
• Experience with nuclear work management processes and quality requirements.
• Communication skills spanning engineers, plant management, and external stakeholders.
• Accountability: you own your team's results, good and bad, without deflecting.

Nice-to-haves

• Professional Engineer license.
• Formal leadership training or prior supervisory experience.
• Experience building teams or growing engineering organizations.
• Familiarity with outage work management and critical path execution.