Program Director, Plant Control Systems (Fusion Energy)

Location: On-site in Denver, Colorado, United States. U.S. citizenship, U.S. national status, permanent residency, or qualifying refugee/asylee status is required.

Company

hirify.global develops inertial fusion energy technology and laser architecture to deploy fusion power plants for global decarbonization.

What you will do

• Own the Plant Control System program within the broader inertial fusion energy plant architecture.
• Coordinate integration across laser, chamber, fusion power, fuel processing, hot maintenance, implosion, facilities, and power conversion systems.
• Steward top-level requirements, constraints, interface control documents, verification flows, and cross-system interfaces.
• Manage budgets, resources, schedules, integration risks, procurement, vendors, and critical-path components.
• Lead plant-wide control readiness reviews, integration checkpoints, and verification and validation activities.
• Guide the transition from conceptual design through detailed design, fabrication, construction, assembly, and commissioning.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, physics, systems engineering, or an equivalent field; an advanced degree is preferred.
• 12+ years of experience in complex technical programs involving industrial automation, plant-wide controls, nuclear or fusion environments, safety-critical systems, precision timing, or data acquisition.
• Experience in program management or systems leadership across multidisciplinary technical teams.
• Strong knowledge of systems integration, interface control, requirements flow-down, and cross-functional technical decision-making.
• Experience with distributed control systems, historians, SCADA architectures, and electrical power management systems.
• Must have U.S. citizenship or national status, a current U.S. Green Card, or qualifying refugee/asylee status.

Nice to have

• Experience with systems engineering frameworks, ICD management, and verification and validation planning.
• Experience with machine learning, predictive maintenance, system telemetry, data repositories, and distributed data access.
• Exposure to cybersecurity for industrial or scientific systems.
• Experience in matrixed R&D environments with complex hardware-software integration.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment in an on-site engineering environment.
• Collaboration with technical architects, subject matter experts, subsystem engineers, program directors, and senior leadership.
• Opportunity to influence outcomes without direct people-management authority.
• Work focused on fusion power, clean energy, and industrial-scale systems integration.