Fuel Systems Lead

Munich, Garching · Full-time · On-site, remote work possible

About Starforge

Starforge is on a mission to make fusion energy a practical utility by factory-manufacturing modular, fleet-deployable fusion reactors. We are fusion's Henry Ford moment.

Our first reactor product line, Unit One, is a 250 MWe spherical tokamak, built from demountable high-temperature superconducting magnets and designed in modular blocks so that every component can be factory-manufactured as well as replaced on site.

Our team comes from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, MIT, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Tokamak Energy, KIT, Lilium, and GE.

Come and join us in building the future.

Build Unit One as our Fuel Systems Lead

Unit One burns deuterium and tritium, but far more flows through the machine. You'll find gases going in: fuel as gas and frozen pellets, impurity gases seeded to protect the divertor, and gases for wall conditioning. And gases coming out: helium ash, unburned fuel, hydrogen, the seeded impurities, and tritiated water and hydrocarbons from the walls. Every stream has to be pumped, cleaned and separated, and the fuel recovered and sent back in, while the blanket breeds new tritium. This is your chance to design the closed fuel cycle of a fusion reactor and see it built, run and repeated across a fleet.

You will be our first fuel specialist, owning fuelling, exhaust, the tritium plant and tritium breeding end-to-end. You will report to the Head of Physics and Reactor Design, and work closely with our neutronics, in-vessel and mechanical owners, our blanket partners and our external research and commercial partners.

What you'll do

• Define Unit One's fuel cycle from a blank page. This includes fuelling, exhaust pumping, the tritium plant, and tritium extraction from the breeding blanket, as one closed loop
• Lead the gas and pellet injection, pumps, isotope separation, detritiation, and storage systems from whiteboard to hardware
• Own tritium inventory, accountancy, permeation and release, and the safety and licensing case for every gram
• Define and own the interfaces to other reactor subsystems, the building, and the power plant
• Build and lead the fuel team, growing it as the program moves from design to licensing to factory production, with a strong safety and quality culture

What we're looking for

• Degree (MSc/PhD) in chemical or process engineering, chemistry, nuclear engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Demonstrated design or operation of tritium, hydrogen isotope or other hazardous gas processing systems
• Demonstrated experience in process modelling and flowsheet design, from mass and energy balances to equipment sizing
• Working knowledge of hydrogen isotope separation, permeation and vacuum pumping
• Comfortable making design calls with incomplete information and documenting the reasoning, in clear written and spoken English Bonus points:
• Work under a nuclear or hazardous-materials safety regime, with calculations a regulator can audit
• Hands-on tritium experience, at a fusion facility or in heavy water reactor operations
• Experience with the design of tritium extraction from liquid metal or ceramic breeding blankets
• Experience with pellet injection or other fusion fuelling systems
• Knowledge of the electrochemistry of water detritiation or hydrogen isotope pumping

What we offer

• Ownership of the fuel cycle of a fusion reactor, the system that decides whether it can run and how it is licensed
• Remote work option, office and lab in Munich or Garching, with relocation support

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