Why this role exists

Bharat Atomics is building ATLAS-150: a pool-type, sodium-cooled quick reactor SMR with a sealed metallic-fuel core, built and designed for India's heavy industries and for the AI data-centre load blocks now coming online.

The NEEV Centre (Nuclear Engineering & Experiment Validation) is where we built out our first reactor and do series of experiments before the nuclear fuel testing. This person will need to build NEEV from bare land and then runs it operationally.

You will be one of the first ~20 people in the company. There is no existing plant, no existing vendor base, and no playbook. All of this must be figured out by this person in consultation with our founders and the core-team.

What you will own

1. Set up the NEEV Centre: land to commissioning

- Site selection and acquisition: Across the Pune industrial belt with technical evaluation (power, water, road/rail access, buffer distance, soil, expansion runway) against commercial and statutory criteria.

- All statutory clearances end-to-end: MIDC/land, Factories Act, MPCB consent to establish and operate, fire NOC, PESO licences for inert and cover gases, hazardous-substance approvals for bulk sodium handling (MSIHC Rules), and early-stage engagement with AERB on facility categorisation.

- Facility design and construction management: high-bay assembly halls, heavy-lift cranage, machine shop, welding and NDT bays, sodium handling and storage areas with inert-gas and non-water fire protection, cleanliness-controlled areas for primary-circuit components, instrumentation and control rooms, utilities and emergency power.

- Capital equipment: specification, make-vs-buy, vendor negotiation, procurement, installation and qualification of machining, forming, welding, heat treatment etc.

- Own the capex budget and the product delivery schedule with full ownership.

2.



Build the Engineering Test Unit (prototype demonstrator)

Translate the frozen conceptual design of ATLAS-150 into physical hardware: a full-scale, non-nuclear, electrically heated integrated demonstrator of the primary heat transport circuit and its key components.

- Convert design intent into manufacturing drawings, process plans, jigs, fixtures and build sequence with the engineering team.

- Fabricate, assemble and instrument: vessel and internals, intermediate heat exchanger, sodium pumps, steam generator, control-rod drive mechanisms, fuel-handling mock-ups, cover-gas and purification systems

- Commission and operate sodium loops safely - preheating and trace heating, sodium fill and drain, purity control, leak detection, and the operating discipline that sodium demands.

- Run the test campaign with engineering: thermal-hydraulic validation, component endurance, handling trials, failure investigation, design feedback.

3. Build the reactor supply chain

- Map, qualify and develop the Indian vendor base for nuclear-grade fabrication. Build direct relationships with vendors e.g. heavy forging, precision machining, special-alloy and instrumentation suppliers.

- Establish the quality management system from day one: nuclear-grade QA/QC, traceability, weld procedure and welder qualification, NDT regime, supplier audits, non-conformance and configuration control.

- Establish a scalable supply chain management and vendor selection for nuclear grade components on-time delivery.

4. Run the facility





- Hire and lead the NEEV team i.e. manufacturing engineers, technicians, welders, machinists, QA, maintenance, stores, EHS, security.

- Own EHS absolutely. Build the safety culture, emergency response and drills.

- Day-to-day operations: production planning, maintenance, inventory, calibration, utilities, budgets, compliance and reporting.

What we are looking for

Non-negotiable

- 15+ years in manufacturing, plant engineering or industrial operations, with at least one greenfield facility taken from empty land to operating plant where you carried the capex, schedule and hiring.

- Deep hands-on precision or heavy manufacturing: complex engines and powertrains, aerospace or defence hardware, pressure vessels, turbomachinery, or process/energy equipment. Automotive OEM or Tier-1 backgrounds are strongly relevant.

- Supply chain development from scratch i.e. you have found, audited, developed and qualified suppliers for parts that did not previously exist.

- Genuine interest in nuclear energy, and the willingness to learn the code and regulatory environment fast. You do not need to be a nuclear engineer. You do need to respect the physics and the paperwork equally.

- Comfort with ambiguity, a founding-team temperament, and a bias for being on the shop floor rather than in a review meeting.

Strongly preferred

- Exposure to nuclear component fabrication or NPCIL/DAE/IGCAR supply i.e. PFBR, PHWR or research-reactor hardware.

- Experience with liquid-metal, molten-salt, high-temperature or otherwise hazardous process systems.

- Statutory navigation in Maharashtra: MIDC, MPCB, Factories Act, PESO.

- Formal project controls capability. schedule, earned value, risk registers on projects above ₹100 Cr.

- B.E. or B. Tech in Mechanical, Production, Metallurgy or Chemical Engineering.

📌 Head of Manufacturing & Facility Operations (Pune)
🏢 Bharat Atomics
📍 Pune