Staff Mechanical Engineer

The Role

We are hiring an engineer to lead the design of novel chemical reactors, taking them from concept through to Code-stamped hardware running in the field. Our reactors handle flammable gases at high pressure and moderate temperatures (200 to 400°C). The central challenges are heat management, materials and joining, and pressure vessel qualification under ASME Section VIII, Division 1, all at a cost that works for commercial deployment. You will choose among competing design approaches and carry the best one into production.

What You Will Do

• Own reactor mechanical design end to end: pressure boundary, internals, headers and manifolds, catalyst handling, flow distribution, and integration into modular skids.

• Lead design selection. Evaluate competing architectures on heat transfer, manufacturability, Code path and cost, and settle on designs in time for each build.

• Own the ASME Code path. Take designs through ASME Section VIII, Division 1, including non-welded construction where it applies. Be our main technical contact with the Authorized Inspector and fabricators' quality programs.

• Develop and qualify joining procedures (brazing and welding) under ASME Section IX, with coupon programs, metallography, and burst and leak testing.

• Run thermal and structural analysis: thermal stress, cycling and fatigue, and pressure loading, tied to our process, kinetics and CFD models.

• Own materials selection and compatibility for hydrogen, CO and other flammable gases, steam, and catalysts.

• Design for safe operation with flammable gas at pressure: relief, containment, leak detection, and hazard reviews (HAZOP) alongside the process team.

• Build the supply chain: material suppliers, finishing and forming vendors, braze shops and pressure vessel fabricators, domestic and international. Write the specs and drawings they build to.

• Take prototypes from drawing to test: coupons, prototype modules, pressure and leak testing, and instrumented testing on process gas.

• Design for scale. Carry designs from demonstration units to commercial modules built the same way in quantity, with cost treated as a primary design parameter.

What You Bring

• BS in Mechanical Engineering, or a related field. An MS or PhD is valued.

• 8+ years designing and delivering pressure equipment, ideally reactors or compact heat exchangers for flammable or high-pressure gas service.

• Hands-on experience getting equipment through ASME Section VIII, Division 1, including working directly with an Authorized Inspector. Experience with brazed, diffusion-bonded or other non-welded construction is a strong plus.

• Experience developing and qualifying brazing or welding procedures under Section IX.

• A solid grounding in metallurgy and materials selection for high-pressure, elevated-temperature gas service, including joint failure modes.

• Proficiency in thermal-structural FEA (ANSYS, Abaqus or equivalent) and in heat transfer analysis. You should be comfortable carrying a problem from a hand calculation all the way to a detailed model.

• A record of taking hardware from concept through fabrication, test and operation, not just analysis.

• Comfort working in a startup: moving quickly with incomplete information, running coupon tests to settle questions, and being hands-on in the lab and on the shop floor.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Fischer-Tropsch, methanol or other strongly exothermic catalytic reactors, especially packed-bed or microchannel designs.

• Experience with boiling-water or two-phase cooled equipment.

• Familiarity with electroplating, photochemical machining, stamping or roll forming of thin sheet.

• Experience qualifying equipment for hydrogen or CO service.

• Experience managing international fabrication vendors.

• Prior work at a hardware startup or on a first-of-a-kind process plant.