Senior Electrical Systems Engineer

About Helion We are a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, with the mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. Our vision is a world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone. Since Helion's founding in 2013, we have raised over $1 billion from long-time investors such as Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricorn Investment Group as well as new investors SoftBank and Lightspeed to propel us forward. Our last prototype, Trenta, completed 10,000 high-power pulses and reached plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius (9 keV). We are now operating Polaris, our next prototype on the path to the world's first fusion power plant. This is a pivotal time to join Helion. You will tackle real-world challenges with a team that prizes urgency, rigor, ownership, and a commitment to delivering hard truths – values essential to achieving what no one has before. Together, we will change the future of energy, because the world can't wait. What You Will Be Doing: As a Senior Electrical Systems Engineer, you will define the electrical hardware that powers and controls our next-generation fusion machines. You will work at the architecture level to ensure electrical subsystems, including power distribution, controls interfaces, sensors, and communication networks, function together as a coherent and reliable platform. In this role, you will lead architectural decisions, own requirements and interfaces, and drive verification and hardware bring-up. You will work closely with engineering, test, and commissioning teams to translate technical objectives into implementable designs and ensure those designs perform as intended during testing and deployment. This role blends architecture development, requirements ownership, and hands-on hardware work, and is well suited for engineers who enjoy working across disciplines while remaining closely connected to the physical system. You Will: - Lead the architecture and design of electrical subsystems, ensuring alignment with overall machine requirements and operational goals. - Define, maintain, and own system and subsystem requirements, ensuring clear traceability from top-level objectives to implemented hardware. - Develop, own, and maintain Interface Control Documents (ICDs) that define electrical, controls, and mechanical interfaces between subsystems and suppliers. - Lead verification planning and execution, ensuring requirements have clear verification methods and driving testing activities. - Operate hands-on during hardware bring-up and prototyping, leading efforts to diagnose and resolve issues across electrical hardware, controls systems, and subsystem interfaces. - Drive collaboration across electrical, controls, mechanical, and test teams to ensure designs function correctly within the overall machine. Own integration of new hardware and subsystems during development and commissioning. - Drive system documentation and engineering processes, including requirements management, design reviews, and integration planning, and mentor junior engineers in these practices. Required Skills: - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field. 8+ years of experience in electrical systems engineering, integration, test, or hardware development. - Proven experience leading system or subsystem architecture, including defining electrical subsystems and their interactions. - Proven experience developing and owning technical requirements and Interface Control Documents (ICDs). - Expert ability to read and interpret electrical schematics, wiring diagrams, and interconnect documentation. - Extensive hands-on experience with hardware bring-up, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis using standard lab instrumentation such as oscilloscopes, DMMs, and logic or spectrum analyzers. - Experience applying system safety and reliability methods, including FMEA, FMECA, or fault analysis. - Demonstrated experience driv