Director, Integrated Target Design

Responsibilities

- Build, grow, and lead the Integrated Target Design group, including recruiting, hiring, onboarding, managing, mentoring, and the professional development of staff.

- Convert program priorities into detailed work scopes, schedules, and task assignments for the team.

- Evaluate near-term capability and resource needs and communicate them to program leadership to support effective staffing and toolchain development.

- Uphold and enforce Xcimer’s cultural values of humble ambition, accountable trust, respectful critique, and rigorous urgency.

- Ensure the high‑quality execution of all work by removing obstacles and maintaining clear priorities for the team.

- Work with the Theory and Computation group to ensure modeling capabilities align with design needs.

- Collaborate with the Diagnostic Physics Division (Imaging and Spectroscopy) to ensure researchers have the diagnostic support, interfaces, and coordination needed for high-quality execution of experiments.

- Participate as a technical authority in cross‑functional discussions with laser engineering, target fabrication, chamber engineering, diagnostics, etc.

- Provide day-to-day technical guidance to team members in implosion physics, LPI, symmetry control, and energy coupling strategies.

- Review and validate team outputs for technical quality and consistency Contribute to technical collaborations with national labs, universities, external vendors, and testing facilities.

- Establish department-wide practices, documentation standards, review processes, and quality control appropriate for industrial fusion systems.

Success Measures

- An Integrated Design team with high measures of performance, strong collaborations, and very clear priorities.

- High-quality outputs delivered on schedule and aligned with program goals.

- Strong integration of target physics and implosion design work into experimental platforms that drive system, element, and program level decisions.

- Effective recruiting, mentoring, and development of internal capabilities.

- Consistent delivery of work scopes tied to physics risks and their resolution.

Qualifications

- Ph.D. in Physics or Engineering, or a related technical field, with knowledge of ICF.

- Demonstrated ability to lead and develop scientific or technical teams.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to convey complex arguments to diverse staff in a matrixed organization.

- Ability to manage execution in a fast-moving, interdisciplinary environment, with evolving priorities.

- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted as a refugee or granted asylum.

Desired

- Deep expertise in inertial confinement fusion, capsule and hohlraum design, laser-plasma instabilities, hydrodynamics, or a related field.

- Familiarity with radiation‑hydrodynamic modeling workflows, methods in physics validation, and developing or supporting experimental platforms at HED facilities (NIF, OMEGA, Z, or similar).

- Experience in multi‑institutional experimental collaborations.

- Familiarity with topics of interest to IFE including target fabrication, DT filling, cryogenic handling, and/or target injection and delivery.

Candidates may be considered for other positions at Xcimer Energy, and our actual base salary will be determined on an individual basis and may vary based on job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience. The range is published in accordance with Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act and California Equal Pay Act.