GbaJohn seeks turbomachinery engineers

Turbomachinery is the part of the machine that turns hot, pressurized gas into useful power. In a nuclear microreactor, that usually means a turbine, compressor, bearings, seals, and a rotor spinning insanely fast in a very unforgiving environment. That is why this hiring post matters. It is a small signal, but it points to something bigger — South Bay’s aerospace talent pool is now getting pulled into advanced nuclear hardware, not just rockets. ### What actually surfaced here? The immediate thing was a job signal, not a funding round or a product launch. GbaJohn highlighted a live posting for a “Founding Turbomachinery Engineer” in Hawthorne tied to a clean-sheet nuclear turbine effort, with equity attached and language clearly aimed at early employees helping define the machine from scratch. The job-board copies describe Hawthorne or Hawthorne/El Segundo as the location and frame the role as part of a founding team. ### Why is turbomachinery the hard part? Because the reactor is only half the trick. A lot of advanced reactor concepts can make heat on paper, but the commercial product has to turn that heat into electricity reliably, compactly, and over long operating periods. In these systems, the turbine and compressor are the beating heart of the machine. Radiant’s current postings spell that out pretty directly. ### Why target rocket people? Because the skill overlap is real. South Bay is packed with engineers who already know propulsion, hot-gas systems, lightweight structures, test culture, and hardware that cannot fail quietly. A nuclear Brayton-cycle machine is not a rocket engine, but the mindset is adjacent — high temperature, high consequence, tight packaging, ugly vibration problems, fast iteration, come do that again in power generation. ### Why Hawthorne and El Segundo? Because that corridor already has the people, suppliers, and culture for hard tech. And it is not hypothetical anymore. Radiant is based in El Segundo, says Kaleidos uses high-speed turbomachinery in a 1 MWe portable microreactor, and is actively hiring multiple turbomachinery roles there rigs. ### What kind of reactor are these teams building around? Mostly compact microreactors that can replace diesel generation for remote sites, military bases, hospitals, or data centers. Radiant’s Kaleidos is a transportable high-temperature gas-cooled design generating about 3 MW thermal and roughly 1 MW electric, and the NRC says it has been in pre-application work since October 2022. That matters because it shows this is not just concept art — tested these machines. ### Is there real momentum behind that? Yes — enough that the U.S. Air Force last week named Radiant among the companies selected under its Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations effort, with first on-base deployments targeted as early as 2028. That gives the whole category more credibility. Hiring a turbomachinery founder stops looking like a weird niche bet and starts looking like workforce buildup for systems that may actually get bought. ### So what is this post really telling you? Basically, the talent market is moving before the public narrative catches up. The flashy part of nuclear startups is usually the reactor core, but the hiring tells you where the pain really is. Right now, one answer is clear — if you know how to make high-speed rotating hardware survive, South Bay nuclear companies want to talk.