Staff Applications Engineer

Antora Energy delivers affordable, reliable energy to industry, data centers, and the grid. Our thermal batteries turn low-cost electricity into always-on heat and power, without supply-constrained critical minerals or multi-year construction timelines. We are growing our company with people who put team and mission first, value connection through laughter and joy, and work with humility and openness. We are committed to building a diverse, passionate, and creative team dedicated to a future powered by abundant, clean, low-cost energy. Position Summary We are seeking a Staff Applications Engineer to establish Antora's applications engineering function, the technical bridge between our product platform and commercial projects. Working alongside our business development, project development, product management, and analytics teams, you will configure Antora's thermal batteries for specific customer sites and applications: industrial process heat, combined heat & power, and utility-scale power for data centers and the grid, in the U.S. and internationally. You will own the technical solution for every opportunity from first conversation through term sheet: running technical discovery with customer engineering/operations teams, sizing and configuring the system for each site, producing conceptual site layouts and heat and power integration designs, setting the technical basis for performance guarantees, and building the cost estimates behind LOIs (Letter of Intent), term sheets, and investment decisions, then handing projects to our project engineering team for detailed design and execution. This is a founding role for this function: you'll define the playbooks, build tools, and help grow the team as our pipeline scales. Roles & Responsibilities Serve as the technical lead for customer opportunities across industrial heat, combined heat & power, and power applications, joining business development on sales calls and owning the technical conversation with customer engineering/operations teams and executives Run technical discovery: own customer data requests (load profiles, steam conditions, utility data, plot plans, one-lines) and site walkdowns; validate opportunity screens for standard applications and run first-pass technical screening for novel ones Size and configure Antora's product for each site within its configurable envelope, creatively optimizing trade-offs across performance, cost, and site constraints Produce conceptual site layouts, heat integration designs, and site boundary-condition definitions Own the product-side electrical configuration and manage the product-to-interconnection interface with our energy/interconnection team Own proposal-stage configuration analysis and cost estimates supporting letters of intent, term sheets, and internal investment approvals Support RFP/RFI responses; anticipate and resolve customer technical objections to keep deals moving Support commercial negotiations with technical exhibits and performance guarantees for LOIs and term sheets with sharp judgment on the economic implications of design choices and guarantees we commit to Prepare basis-of-design handoff packages (configuration specs, layouts, integration concepts, assumptions, and risks) that enable project engineering to pick up projects cleanly for detailed design (FEED and beyond) Channel voice-of-customer and market intel back to product management to sharpen the product and roadmap Scale the applications engineering function: partner with our software and AI team to build tools to automate processes such as layouts, drawings, and cost estimates; mentor and help grow a small team of applications engineers over time Typical travel of ~25%, potentially including some international travel Key Qualifications Bachelor's or equivalent in mechanical, chemical, or electrical engineering (or related field) and 12+ years of experience (or 8+ with a relevant advanced degree) across utility-scale energy projects, large industrial fa…