Senior Manager, Strategic Finance

The Team

As part of the Business organization, Finance provides the financial planning, analysis, and strategic insights that support informed business decisions and long-term growth. The team partners across the company to allocate resources, manage budgets, and ensure financial discipline as Valar scales.

The Role

The Senior Manager, Strategic Finance will own Valar's corporate development agenda and investor-facing function, building the analysis, relationships, and narrative behind the partnerships, capital, and strategic decisions that accelerate the company's path to commercial nuclear power.

You will map the market, originate and qualify opportunities, build the valuation and returns analysis behind them, and support diligence alongside executives and counsel. Commercial agreements and financings are executed by company leadership; your work is what those decisions are built on. You will also own how Valar communicates with its investors: the update cadence, the materials, the data room, and the narrative that connects technical progress to enterprise value.

This role reports to the VP of Finance and partners directly with the CEO, executive leadership, and teams across Commercial, Legal, Licensing, and Engineering. You will be a primary point of contact for investors, strategic partners, bankers, and government stakeholders.

This is a high-ownership role for someone with a heavy investment banking and/or management consulting background in energy who wants to bring that toolkit inside a company building first-of-a-kind infrastructure. This position is onsite in Torrance, California, with regular travel to the Utah pilot plant, partner sites, and investor meetings.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive the corporate development agenda, from market mapping and target identification through qualification, outreach, and prioritization.
• Evaluate strategic partnerships, joint ventures, off-take and power purchase opportunities, strategic investments, and acquisitions, and build the analysis and recommendation behind each.
• Build the valuation, returns, and deal models behind every opportunity, including scenario analysis, capital structure, dilution, and downside cases.
• Support diligence, coordinating internal teams and outside advisors and holding workstreams to timeline and quality.
• Support capital formation strategy across equity, debt, project finance, government programs, and strategic capital, building the analysis behind how the pilot plant and first commercial deployments get funded.
• Write the investment memos and recommendations that bring opportunities to the executive team and the board, with a clear view on whether to move and on what terms.
• Own the market and competitive intelligence that informs strategy, including power markets, industrial and data center demand, the advanced nuclear landscape, and the policy drivers behind them.
• Own the investor relations function, including the update cadence, data room, investor CRM, and the board and investor packages that communicate progress, milestones, risks, and capital needs.
• Support fundraising by preparing the narrative, materials, and analysis and managing diligence requests.
• Build and deepen relationships across institutional investors, strategic corporates, lenders, and government stakeholders.
• Partner with Finance, Legal, Commercial, and Engineering to pressure-test assumptions and to support delivery once leadership moves an opportunity forward.

You Will Be Successful in This Role If

• You are an incredible storyteller. You can build an argument in writing, carry it in the room, and make it land visually on a page.
• You have a high bar for craft. Your memos, updates, and decks need no cleanup before they go to an investor or the board, and you can turn a complex data set into a single chart an audience understands immediately.
• You build models and analysis that are rigorous, transparent, and hold up under investor and board scrutiny.
• You have judgment about which opportunities are worth pursuing and the conviction to say no to the ones that are not.
• You are as comfortable with engineers and plant economics as you are with investors and term sheets, and can translate fluently between them.
• You bring strong ownership and hold yourself and external partners accountable to deadlines and commitments.
• You can move quickly without sacrificing accuracy or judgment in an ambiguous, fast-changing environment.
• You are interested in building and eventually leading a strong corporate development and investor relations team.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Engineering, Business, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience, including 5+ years in investment banking and/or management consulting serving the energy, power, or infrastructure sectors.
• Demonstrated experience supporting transactions end-to-end, such as M&A, joint ventures, project finance, off-take or commercial agreements, or private capital raises.
• Expert financial modeling and valuation skills and advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel.
• Proven ability to produce executive, board, and investor-ready materials under tight deadlines.
• Exceptional written, verbal, and visual communication skills, with a portfolio of executive-quality memos, investor materials, and presentations.
• Ability to operate in a fast-moving environment with incomplete information.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• In-house experience at a startup, high-growth company, or a corporate development, strategic finance, or investor relations function.
• Direct experience in nuclear, power generation, renewables, LNG, or large-scale industrial infrastructure.
• Experience with project finance and off-take structures for first-of-a-kind capital projects, and familiarity with federal energy funding and incentive programs.
• Exposure to a VC-backed company and familiarity with fundraising, investor, and board reporting requirements.
• Established network across institutional investors, strategic corporates, and energy-sector bankers.
• MBA, CFA, or equivalent.

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary
• Equity ownership in a rapidly growing advanced energy company
• Comprehensive medical benefits
• Unlimited PTO
• Free daily lunch and dinner provided onsite
• Generous PPE stipend
• High-impact startup environment with significant ownership and autonomy
• Opportunities for rapid career growth and internal advancement
• Direct collaboration with experienced operators, engineers, and industry leaders
• The opportunity to help build and scale transformative energy technology from the ground up