Looking for a Hanford site job with good pay? Free website can help

Finding job openings at the Hanford nuclear site just got easier.

Former Hanford worker Brian Hamm remembers trying to look for other Hanford jobs in the years he did health physics work at the nuclear site.

“Painful,” is how he described it.

While Hanford is a U.S. Department of Energy site, most of the work is done by private contractors working for the government. That means people looking for a job at the site have to figure out who those contractors are and then keep their eye on multiple websites to track job openings.

Hamm has simplified the process by starting HanfordJobs.us, a website that posts job listings from multiple Hanford contractors and related employers.

As of the start of fiscal year 2025, about 13,000 workers were employed at the Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington, based on the number of active security badges for entrance onto the site. The site has an annual budget of about $3.2 billion.

Hamm also includes jobs posted by the Tri-Cities largest single employer, DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which has its roots in research to support the Hanford site.

It employs about 6,000, the majority of them at its Richland campus.

Jobs at Hanford and PNNL are coveted by many in the Tri-Cities area.

The Tri-City Development Council says that the two DOE projects account for 12% to 13% of the jobs in Benton and Franklin counties but about 25% of the income.

Hamm left health physics work at the Hanford site to found Omni Innovations, co-owned with his wife Rebecca Redick, the head of operations for HanfordJobs.

Hamm designed the job aggregation site under Omni Innovations, which he describes as a system design company.

As of Monday HanfordJobs listed 148 jobs at 10 companies, including Hanford contractors, PNNL and Tri-Cities nuclear employers Energy Northwest, which operates the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power reactor, and Framatome, which manufactures nuclear fuel.

They include many engineering job listings, but also openings for analysts, an attorney, administrative support positions, union craft jobs and internships.

The website’s popularity indicates it fills a need.

In just over a month using social media posts to introduce the new site, it has been visited more than 420,000 times.

Hamm’s planning to add more employers, based on feedback he’s received in the first month since HanfordJobs went live.

That likely will include the Department of Energy’s Hanford office in Richland and the Washington state Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program based in Richland. More subcontractor job postings also are a possibility.

But first he wants to expand the website to other DOE sites across the nation.

Jobs site mostly free

The original site is not much of a moneymaker, at least so far, but that’s OK with Hamm.

He started it as a community service when a relative was looking for a job.

Some people think you have to know someone at Hanford to get a job there, Hamm said, but the job aggregation website is intended to help make those jobs more available to anyone.

Almost everything on the website is free now.

That includes not just job listings, but artificial intelligence guidance for paths for people who have been laid off, are veterans or are looking for a career change. Resumes can be uploaded to find the best Hanford matches for skills.

If you don’t have the credentials or skills for the DOE project jobs you want, the aggregation site is working in partnership with Atomic Technical Institute, a new Richland-based trade school started to provide the training needed for Hanford jobs. It is licensed by the Washington State Training Board and holds DOE National Training Center reciprocity certification.

A fee is charged on HanfordJobs for resume help, and eventually Hamm plans to start charging for analytics that show salary trends and posting patterns. Advertising is also a possibility.

In the meantime, if the site gives you a good lead for a Hanford job, feel free to hit the “Buy me a coffee” button and leave Omni Innovations a tip.