About Avalanche Energy

Avalanche Energy is a Washington-based startup building compact, deployable fusion systems through rapid hardware iteration. Rather than pursuing fusion as a single grid-scale outcome, Avalanche develops transportable fusion machines designed to be built, tested, and operated on short cycles, turning real hardware into steady progress. This approach enables near-term applications that demand extreme energy density and endurance—starting with fusion neutron production for radioisotope power and other defense and space uses—while advancing the underlying fusion platform. Backed by U.S. government programs and a team experienced in delivering complex systems, Avalanche is focused on building fusion that runs in the real world, not just on paper.

Avalanche might be a fit for you if:

You are energized by making complex test operations run smoothly,. the person who ensures the right work happens at the right time with the right people, even when you are not the deepest technical expert in the room. You thrive in environments where multiple campaigns compete for shared resources and someone needs to bring order, visibility, and accountability to the chaos. You are comfortable operating across teams, balancing priorities, and building the processes that make execution predictable and scalable. You care about readiness discipline, schedule integrity, and continuous improvement because you have seen what happens when those things break down.

About the Role

Avalanche Energy is hiring an Integration & Test Manager to lead the operational side of our growing test execution organization. As we scale the number of Orbitron test cells and increase campaign throughput, we need someone who can turn test execution into a managed, coordinated system rather than a collection of independent efforts.

This role is primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of test campaign execution—planning and sequencing work across test cells, coordinating resources across engineering and science, ensuring campaigns are ready to run, and driving issues to resolution. You will work across test cell owners, scientists, engineering functions, and Program Management to ensure test campaigns are properly sequenced, resourced, and executed. Alongside execution management, this role is responsible for developing the people, processes, and tools that make test execution reliable and scalable as the organization grows. This role reports to the Head of PMO and Systems Engineering.

Responsibilities

Execution Management

• Own cross-test-cell execution planning and resource coordination from campaign definition through execution—integrating plans from test cell owners, resolving conflicts and priority tradeoffs, and ensuring schedule integrity.
• Forecast and coordinate engineering, facilities, and staffing needs with Program Management and functional managers to maintain execution resilience across concurrent campaigns.
• Maintain situational awareness of each test cell’s status, upcoming experiments, and expected timelines through regular coordination with test cell owners and scientists.
• Work with scientists to ensure all work scope is identified and campaigns are defined at a level that supports reliable execution. Ensure required reviews (design, integration readiness, test readiness) are completed and properly sequenced.
• Report execution status, risks, and constraints to Program and Leadership. Prioritize and sequence conflicting work according to program priorities, escalating unresolved issues.

People, Process & Tools

• Manage and develop the Integration & Test team, including hiring, performance management, career development, and workload balancing.
• Own, develop, and enforce standardized test execution processes across test cells, including readiness criteria, review gates, and documentation expectations.
• Define and maintain training and qualification standards for test conductors and integration and test engineers.
• Drive continuous improvement of test execution by identifying systemic bottlenecks and leading process, infrastructure, or tooling improvements.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, physics, or a related technical discipline.
• 6+ years of overall experience, with a focus on test operations, integration, or systems engineering in a hardware-intensive environment.
• Strong operational leadership skills: resource planning, schedule management, risk identification, and cross-functional coordination.
• Strong communication skills—able to report execution status and frame risks clearly to leadership and technical audiences.
• Proven ability to work effectively across disciplines (engineering, science, management)
• Ability to maintain situational awareness across parallel efforts and make sound prioritization decisions under competing demands.
• Prior experience in a startup or growth-stage company, with a track record of building processes that teams adopt.

Desired Qualifications

• 10+ years of overall engineering or operational experience, predominantly in cross-functional environments (e.g., test, integration, or systems engineering) including lead or supervisory roles.
• Background in plasma physics, applied physics, aerospace, energy or similarly complex, high-consequence test environments.
• Experience managing or building a test execution function in a scaling organization.
• Familiarity with vacuum systems, high-voltage systems, cryogenics and pressure systems.
• People management experience, including hiring, mentoring, and developing technical staff.

Additional Considerations

Location: Onsite, Tukwila, WA.

Benefits

• Excellent medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• 10 paid holidays and a company-wide December holiday break.
• Generous paid vacation and sick time.
• Small, tight-knit team with low barriers to action.
• Exposure to a wide range of challenging, cross-disciplinary technical programs.
• Meaningful equity in the form of stock options.

We value people of all backgrounds. We are an equal opportunity employer, and you do not need to match every listed qualification to apply. If you like being hands-on, all over the system, and making difficult hardware work in the real world, we encourage you to apply.

This position may require access to export-controlled information. In order to comply with U.S. export control laws, applicants must be a “U.S. person” as defined by U.S. trade control laws (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual).

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