Stellarator Systems Architect

Overview

Proxima Fusion is Europe’s fastest-growing fusion company and the continent’s best-funded fusion player, the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP).

Backed by over €650M, the team is based in Munich, Zurich, and Oxford and is developing the hardware and infrastructure needed to deliver the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant.

Our concept advances the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator through two next-generation machines: Alpha and Stellaris.

The work combines stellarator optimization, advanced computation, machine learning, and high-temperature superconducting magnets to unlock higher-performance designs.

Turning these designs into a functioning fusion power plant requires excellence and ownership across every discipline—from physics and engineering to software, manufacturing, law, and business functions.

What you will do

• Hold the whole machine in view. Keep Alpha converging on its top-level mission requirements while detailed decisions land at a fast pace.
• Close the loop between architecture and engineering.

Address feedback from the subsystem teams and detailed engineering design, and fold it back into the machine architecture fast, with judgment about what actually moves the needle.

• Hunt the uncertainties that drive the design.

Identify the large model uncertainties baked into our design process, quantify them, and decide where to spend margin and where to reclaim it.

• Find the levers.

Use first-principles estimates and reduced models to locate the changes that cut cost or unlock performance, then scope them alongside the teams who will build them.

Your profile

• You’ve earned your judgment on complex machines.

You hold a Ph D or Master’s in physics, engineering, or an adjacent field, with years of experience in industries where integration challenges are at the heart of the design (e. g., aerospace, semiconductors, or Formula 1).

• Your view spans physics.

You’re comfortable reasoning about Lorentz forces on a coil as well as microwave-plasma coupling, and you know when a back-of-envelope calculation beats a week of simulation.

• You reach for whatever tool fits.

Whether pen-and-paper calculation, a simulator you coded, or a commercial multiphysics package, the method serves the question, not the other way around.

• You iterate to win. You treat fast iteration as how real machines are designed, incorporating feedback from every loop.
• You make things land. Every study, tool, and memo you produce ends in an actionable insight and a clear next step.
• You build in code like an engineer, not a scripter. Git, CI/CD, and the Py Data stack are comfortable tools for you.
• Interview process
• Recruiter Interview (30-60 min)
• Technical Screening (30 min)
• Technical Panel (3x60 min)
• This role sits at L3 of our framework; please inquire during the recruitment process for further information.
• Our commitment

At Proxima Fusion, our mission is bold: making limitless clean energy a reality.

We are building a high-performing, diverse team that brings different perspectives, challenges assumptions, and builds together with purpose.

We know that diversity of thought and experience leads to better ideas, stronger execution, and a more resilient team.

We don’t look at how you identify, what you look like, who you choose to worship or what ethnicity you are.

We care about what you can bring to the table.

Benefits and location

Location and specific benefits are discussed during the interview process.

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