Software job posting in nuclear energy industry

[phantom power]

Appropos of nothing, this is the first software job posting in the nuclear energy industry that I've seen show up in my standing job searches.

Located in highly desirable Scottsdale!

Advance your career in the dynamic nuclear power industry by joining the worldwide, motivated team of employees at Westinghouse Electric Company, the global leader in nuclear operations, experience and technology.

Senior Software Engineer

Description:
Westinghouse, a group company of Toshiba Corporation, is the world's pioneering nuclear power company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world. We help our customers produce reliable and environmentally-friendly electricity by enhancing nuclear plant availability and dependability, and by reducing operation and maintenance costs.

CS Innovations, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Company, is pioneering the use of new technologies in nuclear power safety-systems. Located in highly-desirable Scottsdale, Arizona, CS Innovations offers a small-company, fast-paced environment, with the backing and stability of an established, global player in the nuclear industry. CS Innovations is seeking job applicants, who want to take their career to the next level in an organization with ample opportunity.

The successful candidate will: Be responsible for the design and implementation of PC applications and embedded firmware that interface with our hardware systems. Applications include advanced test systems, data logging applications for data processing, GUI-based monitoring applications, utility tools, etc. Work with the System Engineers and other technical team members to integrate and debug software in a system as a key member of the product development team. The systems typically include microprocessors, FPGA, electro-mechanical relays, digital and analog control designs.

Qualifications:
A successful candidate would be familiar with and/or have experience with the following:

- Expertise creating graphical user interface applications for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and/or QNX strongly desired.
- Expertise developing firmware for low-level hardware interfaces (e.g. digital/analog I/O), data acquisition / analysis, and system control using various communication protocols (USB, TCP/IP, RS232/485, SPI, HART, custom).
- Candidates will have expertise in full cycle software development including system/software requirements, architecture, analysis, design, implementation, hardware/software integration, test and debugging, documentation, and maintenance in a disciplined software engineering environment.
- Working knowledge of RTCA DO-178B Design Assurance Guidelines.
- Experience writing real-time industrial control software highly desirable.
- Demonstrated "finisher" and "self-starter" with common sense and the ability to be creative, persistent and stay with a problem until it is resolved in the right manner and with minimum management. Must be detail oriented.
- Expertise using the C/C++ language.
- Possesses strong documentation skills, capable of writing requirements, design specifications, test plans, test reports etc.
- Experience in the nuclear industry highly desirable.
- 5+ years of experience with development and debugging tools (source level debuggers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, multi-meters).
- Experience in the use of modern software engineering processes (CMMI level 3 or higher), methodologies and tools is desirable.
- Maintain a proactive posture towards reusability and quality.

Salary/Benefits: Salary commensurate with experience
Westinghouse welcomes enthusiastic, dedicated, and innovative individuals with a comprehensive benefits package including Competitive Pay, Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance, Short-term and Long-term Disability, Life & Accident Insurance, Flexible Spending Accounts, Savings Plan, Pension Plan and Paid Vacation. We also offer a number of Work/Life Programs, such as our Flextime program, offering flexible work hours to employees, and a variety of Training and Development opportunities, such as Educational Reimbursement that pays for approved satisfactorily completed business-related degree programs and non-degree courses.

[mrdmk]

1. I love the word "Expertise"

- To have "Expertise" with THREE Operating Systems. The pay for "Expertise" with one of those operating systems is $40k - 50k per/year.

- To have "Expertise" programing FIRMWARE. The pay for "Expertise" in Machine Language Programing with periphery addressable routines (sorry mid to high level programmers <0's and 1's only> need not apply) is $50k -80k per/year.

- To have "Expertise" in program development in a engineering environment. This requires having two MS degrees ISDS (computer) and Engineering (thermal dynamics engineering, stress engineering, electrical engineering) the pay for one of these employees is $60k - 100k per/year all combined into one person requires a multiplier of 2.

- To have "Expertise" in missile development (from what I gather: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B ), pay is $120k + per/year.

- An "Expertise" programmer to run a program during operation. The pay for a Programmer (?) is $60k - 120k.

- To have a "Desire" in starting and finishing his/her job (and must happy or devoid of all emotions) $?k per/year. (Cannot put a price on this one.)

- An "Expertise" in C++ specialty programming. $80k - $120k or more.

- To be able to "Communicate" in document writing for specialized engineering project. A BS in Engineering and a BA in Business Communications pay is $60k - 100k per/year. (Question. Is this just in English or some other language like Latin?)

- To have "5 years experience" in using electronic diagnostic tools. BS in Electrical Engineering. Pay $60k - 100k per/year.

- An "Expertise" in Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI.) Read it for yourself, to long to post here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMMI . Please reply to this post if you the pay for this type of employment!

- To be "Proactive" in environmental concerns while developing a nuclear missile. BS in Environmental Engineer is $60k - 100k per/year.


This is beyond Guru status, more like God status. I wonder who they are attempting to replace, somebody who died at their desk while going to school and working at the same time!

I need to mention this, this the reason I did not go back to school to further my computer education. I went back to school to get a BA in Business with an emphasis in Accounting. I got tire of jerk-off job requirements with while not getting paid enough in the computer field. Not to mention all of the "fast-tract" DeVry graduates who could not find their ass with either hand at high noon.

[Indenturedebtor]

3. Yeah it just seems to get worse... everyone wants one person to do 30 jobs

and they want to pay you half what any one of those jobs is worth to do it.

Ridiculous.

[phantom power]

4. I think you have to get the joke, when it comes to requirement lists...

It's usually more of a wish-list, than a list of hard requirements. They are looking for somebody whose inner product with their list is as close to 1 as possible. I'd estimate my inner product against this posting at about 20-30 degrees(*). I might apply, just to see what happens, but I would predict that they can find somebody whose experience is a better match.


(*)all right, that's the arccos of the inner product.

[mrdmk]

9. Good luck!!! Let me know what happens...

:smoke:

btw: who the hell would unrecommended this thread. I mean, what a hard-nose.

[bananas]

6. Regarding DO-178B

The nuclear industry is apparently trying to use safety analysis methods developed for the aircraft industry:

Some interesting comments at The Oildrum regarding the history of nuclear energy safety requirements

<snip>

Once the full dimensions of a large scale nuclear accident became apparent, the aviation model of construction was adopted for new nukes.

<snip>

NQA-1 is largely a subset of ISO 9001.

The requirements of the Quality Assurance parts of 10 CFR are a copy of similar regs for aviation.

<snip>

[mrdmk]

10. Now is that for nuclear power plants or missiles? n/t

[bananas]

11. Power plants.

If the job was for missiles, they would have listed military standards requirements (MIL-SPEC, MIL-STD).

edit to add: Here's a description of the company - they replace obsolete electronic components in aging nuclear power plants with gate arrays:

http://westinghousenuclear.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=193

Westinghouse Announces Acquisition of CS Innovations, LLC

PITTSBURGH, July 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC has acquired CS Innovations, LLC, a leading Instrumentation and Control (I&C) nuclear product supplier to the digital I&C safety system upgrade market. The transaction is expected to be completed within August 2009.

Located in Scottsdale, Ariz., United States, CS Innovations will become known as CS Innovations, a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC. CS Innovations offers the only non-software-based solution that meets current requirements for digital safety systems, and is approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

John McInerney, vice president of Westinghouse Repair, Replacement and Automation Services (RRAS) noted that there is an increasing demand for technology such as that offered by CS Innovations for both operating and new nuclear plant markets.

"The acquisition of CS Innovations complements a core Westinghouse business expansion initiative. It also serves the company's Repair, Replacement and Automation Services business well by positioning us to better serve our customers as they work to meet the ever growing demand for clean, efficient nuclear power production, " said Mr. McInerney. "We are pleased to have this opportunity to invest in our I&C future by bringing CS Innovations into the Westinghouse fold. Not only are we adding great products, but also we are bringing on board talented and experienced employees who will help Westinghouse lead the nuclear renaissance."

Of primary interest to Westinghouse is CS Innovations' Advanced Logic System (ALS) platform. According to Larry Erin, director of Westinghouse Safety Systems Engineering and Services, "This platform is based on standard logic implemented by using Field Programmable Gate Arrays, and is designed to mitigate concerns related to future obsolescence. The U.S. NRC has approved the ALS platform as an acceptable approach to address software common mode failure and Diversity and Defense-In-Depth concerns within safety system applications. The ALS platform also is attractive in that it is scalable from a single-system replacement to a full safety I&C replacement."

Additionally, noted Mr. Erin, the platform provides dedicated control logic, plus advanced testing and diagnostic capability, while providing for the reliability and integrity attributes that are critical to safety systems applications. Westinghouse plans to incorporate the ALS platform into operating plant safety system upgrades as well as in new plant opportunities.

Steen Sorensen, president of CS Innovations stated, "We are pleased that Westinghouse will optimize and facilitate the growth of the CS Innovations product line -- especially the Advanced Logic System platform."

Westinghouse Electric Company, a Toshiba Group company, is the world's pioneering nuclear power company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately over 40 percent of the world's operating nuclear plants.

SOURCE Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC

SOURCE: Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC

Web site: http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/127481.html

[NNadir]

12. The fact is that you know very little about safety requirements or quality systems.

For instance, you spend a lot of time here trying to prove that nuclear power plants are as dangerous as all the stuff you don't care about, specifically, coal, dangerous natural gas, and dangerous fossil fuels.

If any energy industry were required to meet nuclear standards it would collapse immediately.

[mrdmk]

14. For the most part, the plants work just fine... There have been problems,

Thank God they are few and far in-between. There is the major exception is the Chernobyl disaster. Three Mile Island came to close for comfort for many and rightly so!

The biggest problem is what to do spent pellets, used nuclear reactors, and anything else that becomes radioactive. Unfortunately, the stuff comes out hotter than it went in. Another problem is nuclear reactors have a life expectancy of 20 years and no more. We will not talk about what happens to the people who have to mine the stuff.

France probably had the best nuclear program for design and cost effectiveness. All of France's reactors had the same design that made for lower cost in training, maintenance, and repairs. Yet, they had run their at reduced capacity because of a lack of water for cooling. France like California has a major drought.

Nuclear energy has some pluses, in many cases these positives cannot outweigh the negatives.

[bananas]

16. The fact is, you're wrong again.

[NNadir]

2. My boy's 15 and is interested in learning C++ for his robotics team.

I'll show him this ad to encourage that interest.

Nuclear science is computationally beautiful. In fact the field involves great science exposure on broad levels.

The nuclear engineer needs to be aware of chemistry, classical and non-classical physics, statistical mechanics, computational and numerical methods and of course, robotics.

Cool.

Sounds like a great job, certainly better than window washer and glass polisher of dust encrusted mirrors and um, sugarcane field hand.

[phantom power]

5. C++ is a good language to know.

I'm biased, since it is my specialty. If you want code to run really fast, C/C++ are still pretty much second only to assembly. Modern C++ has a lot of language features. Learning to use them all to maximum effect, without hanging yourself, takes experience. It's endless fun(*), if that's your thing.

(*) excepting the occasional times when it makes you want to put a gun to your mouth.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Pah. Libraries are for wimps

When I was a lad, I used assembly language. At least until I'd memorised the 8086 instruction set in hex.

I can also make Christmas decorations out of punched tape, which seems to be something of a dying art these days. And the chads make great fake snow.

[mrdmk]

8. I prefer 80 column house of cards!

A long time to build, but quick to crash. If you follow my drift.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. A bit like my C++ programs, in fact.

:(

[phantom power]

18. There's always...

[Indenturedebtor]

15. I'm planning on taking it over the summer

Right now I'm finishing VB and LAN/WAN technologies. I plan on taking Data Base Structures, and Advanced VB, then going after 2 C++ Classes, 3 Java Classes, and then I dunno...

What do you think of that plan to land a developer job in Java or .Net? Any must haves, any must throwaways?

This will be my second bachelors so I only have to take IT classes.

[phantom power]

17. If you are targeting DB/IT/web-based apps....

you might actually consider ignoring C++, if it allows you to get more web-based protocols. Although I think that C++ is a very good thing to have on the resume, because not everybody can do it. FWIW, I do not see a lot of DB/IT job postings where C++ is on their wish-list. Web-based protocols seem very big in that space. PHP seems to show up a lot. AJAX (which isn't even a language, so much as a methodology).

Frankly, my career is off in a weird little corner. Prototyping machine learning algorithms for applications. It makes me a not-awesome source of advice on IT career planning.

[Indenturedebtor]

24. Ok I will take one C++ class, PHP and C# I think after reading all comments

Truth be told I just want to be excellent at what I do, be challenged, and make enough to be secure and take vacations every once in awhile. I don't really care what kind of development I end up doing... I'm in project management now and I just can't stop myself from wanting to code everything myself lol. I figured I'd go back to school and just embrace it :D

Thanks for the advice!

[Nederland]

19. I'd second the opinion above

If you want to work on DB/IT/web-based apps I'd look at Java or C#, maybe even PHP for small, simple stuff. I started out using C then C++ but then moved on to Java when I got into web-apps. Knowing C++ has it's own benefits though, because unlike Java or C#, the language doesn't let you take stuff like memory management for granted. I admit that working in Java for the last 10 years has made me a bit lazy. Sometimes you forget just much effort is happening behind the scenes in that language, and you write inefficient code as a result. Of course, some would say everything written in Java is inefficient, but that's a religious argument :)

Best of luck.

[Indenturedebtor]

23. Thank you! I'm not entirely sure if I want to go all in Web or .Net

It's really hard to decide. I find myself wishing that I needed more classes to graduate... as weird as that sounds. Maybe it means that I've made the right choice of profession.

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. “Maybe it means that I've made the right choice of profession. ”

If programming is the right choice for you, you will love it.
If you don't love it, it’s not the right choice for you.

As off-the-wall as it may sound; If you’re a musician, that increases the odds that you’ll be a good programmer.

[Indenturedebtor]

27. There are many things besides music that involve a love of patterns and

finding beauty in the simple but elegant expression of divine efficiency... or something like that :P

I was always told that I was very musically talented, but it is finding "music" in the world that really gets me going. There is nothing quite so delicious as discovering a connection between seemingly disparate pieces of information. Taking those pieces of information and abstracting them into their logical equivalents, and then making them sing together is magnificent. That is what I find so appealing about programming - the way that you can build these almost perfect little machines out of thin air. Every program is like a perfect little English garden with meticulously trimmed hedgerows and the carefully controlled chaos of bounded wildflower beds.

[AdHocSolver]

28. I programmed for twenty years and most of the code I worked with was more like a mass of weeds.

I did work on developing some new code for an embedded system in C with a group of really excellent programmers. The code was well-structured, readable, mostly self-documenting, and, as far as we could tell through thorough testing, bug-free. However, this was the exception, rather than the rule.

Most of my work was maintaining other people's code, which ranged from a very few instances of superb, to mostly bad or obnoxiously bad. If you think that coding is all candy canes and sugar plum fairies, you may become disillusioned very quickly.

There is more problematic code out their than good code. That said, some of my more satisfying projects were in rewriting some really horrible code, absolutely hated by the users, and making it work well. By the way, discussing code operation with the users is often the best way to design or maintain good software.

[Indenturedebtor]

32. Thanks for the tips. I actually work in software implementation now

so I'm well familiar with how ugly it can be! Our software seems really good to me. We have the occasional bug, but all in all our system is very stable and the issues are easily trackable by the folks who know how to track it.

However... we interface with a lot of systems that are a freaking mess! And don't even get me started on some of the interface garbage that some of our clients throw at us... yikes.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. I'm gonna go out on a limb here

Taking a course in ANSI C is probably a good thing to do (simply because so many of today’s languages are based on C syntax.)

Taking C++ is a good idea because a personnel department will want to see it on your transcript. If you want to be a .Net developer, you should probably take C#.

Taking lots of Java will help you think right.

Take some PHP. It’s still quite widely used on the web (check out the URL at the top of your browser window.) Look into Ruby.


Now, here’s where I get radical:
Take an assembly language course.

• It will help give you an appreciation for what the computer is really doing with your code.
• Furthermore, it will help keep you from thinking that C syntax rules the world.

[Indenturedebtor]

22. Thank you I think that you are all on more or less the same page

I would very much like to take an assembly language course after I get my degree. I believe very strongly that whatever field you're in you should KNOW your field.

I will definitely now look into taking some PHP as that seems to be a common suggestion.

I will also look into the C# piece and thanks :) Though as you say I should try to take something less object oriented without inherent garbage collection.

Thank you for your thoughts!

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. I can't help it, I find C ugly

C++ is C with a paper bag tied on its side. I would much rather write in Object Pascal.

Are error checking and strong typing really such loathsome burdens to bear?

Imagine how different today’s computers would be if it weren’t for this classic bit of K&R.

void strcpy (char *s, char *t)
{
    while (*s++ = *t++)
	;
}

Pithy, svelte, largely illegible and dangerous as Hell!

[phantom power]

26. you see, for me svelte and dangerous is a turn-on

did I just say that?

[AdHocSolver]

29. That snippet of C code brought to mind fond memories of learning C.

At school, I learned to program using Cobol, Fortran, and PL/I. I also took a class in IBM/360 assembly language programming. However, that really never helped me understand good programming practice, and I never really liked assembly language programming.

In the early 1980's, I worked for a company that programmed microcomputers, and was given a micro and a C compiler and told to learn C. I bought a copy of K and R (The C Programming Language) and used the book as a tutorial. I learned more about computers and good programming practice from that book than any other programming book that I read.

A good C text will explain the pitfalls in using C which is the best way to learn good coding practice. C is essentially a high level assembly language that is applicable to any processor. Learning how a processor works by learning assembly language is like learning how to drive a car by studying engines and transmissions. Moreover, C++ is so overly complicated, that it is hard to see the forest for the trees. It was Bjarne Stroustroup, the creator of C++, who said, and I paraphrase: "While you can shoot yourself in the foot coding in C, you risk blowing your leg off with C++."

If you want to build a desk, coding in C would be like buying some lumber and a set of tools, while coding in C++ would involve growing a tree, chopping it down, sawing the tree into boards, and making your own set of tools to do the job. Moreover, C++ code is bloated (both source and object), and much harder to debug.

[AdHocSolver]

30. I can only think of a couple of engineers whom I met who had most of the expertise required.

The key phrase in the ad that explains their mindset is:

"Salary/Benefits: Salary commensurate with experience"

The ad is written so that almost no one will come close to filling the requirements, and they will use that as an excuse to offer a low starting salary, with a promise of an early evaluation and raise if they decide to keep you. That evaluation will be delayed, and any raise will be trivially small.

By the way, if they use Microsoft Windows anywhere in the system, the planet is doomed.

[bananas]

31. I did.

:hi: