Recycling Operations Engineer Lead

Role overview

Establish the operating model and operations engineering foundation for a complex fuel recycling facility. You will represent future facility operators throughout design, construction, commissioning, startup, and production ramp-up, translating operational, safety, security, safeguards, material-accountability, and regulatory needs into design inputs and readiness plans. The work spans multiple engineering and project disciplines, with a focus on safe, secure, operable, maintainable, and testable systems.

Responsibilities - Develop and control the facility concept of operations across normal, startup, shutdown, standby, maintenance, upset, degraded, and emergency conditions. - Turn operational and regulatory needs into traceable requirements, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary limits, and acceptance criteria. - Review designs and documents—including process diagrams, equipment specifications, layouts, control narratives, alarms, interfaces, and system descriptions—from an operations perspective. - Lead reviews of operability, maintainability, accessibility, remote handling, operator tasks, human factors, and recovery from failures; track findings to resolution. - Build plans for staffing, procedures, training, maintenance, commissioning, startup, turnover, and production ramp-up, with defined milestones and responsibilities. - Set expectations for system turnover, walkdowns, pre-operational and integrated testing, initial material introduction, and operational-readiness reviews; communicate readiness, risks, and open design actions.

Requirements - Bachelor’s degree in a relevant engineering discipline or equivalent directly applicable experience. - At least 10 years in nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear, chemical, petrochemical, refining, specialty chemical, or another complex industrial process environment. - Significant facility operations, commissioning, startup, maintenance, or operational support experience, combined with experience supporting facility design or capital projects. - Experience with greenfield facility development, brownfield modifications, or both. - Demonstrated experience developing or implementing commissioning, readiness, procedure, training, maintenance, or startup programs. - Ability to translate engineering designs into practical operating requirements, test plans, procedures, staffing needs, and acceptance criteria. - Experience reviewing engineering documents such as process diagrams, equipment specifications, control narratives, and system descriptions, plus strong communication and multidisciplinary coordination skills.

Nice to have

Experience designing, commissioning, starting up, or operating nuclear fuel-cycle facilities, including work involving remote or radiological environments.