Founding Product Engineer, Desalination

Job Description

Founding Product Engineer, Desalination

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Contract to start, part-time, with a clear path to full-time and technical leadership. Remote, with periodic in-person time.

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About us

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We're Maris Fons, an early-stage company building new infrastructure for one of the world's greatest challenges: fresh water.

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We're developing a desalination system designed to work at large scale, alongside the industrial facilities that will shape the coming decades. The field we're entering doesn't fully exist yet. We know the road ahead holds hard engineering problems, and we're looking for the person who wants to solve them with us.

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We're founder-funded, and IP counsel is fully engaged. Our prototype is under construction and approaching pilot stage, with stakeholder planning and engagement underway. Details of the technology are only shared under a confidentiality agreement once we're in serious conversation.

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The role

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We're hiring our first engineer. You'll come in as Founding Product Engineer and, as the technology and the team grow, step into the role of engineering lead, with a path to CTO. We care more about trajectory than tenure: we want someone who can absorb a lot quickly, form a view, and say it plainly.

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Your first two weeks

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• Get under the hood of our concept, models, and prototype plans within your first day or two
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• Give us direct, written feedback: what works, what doesn't, what we've missed, and what you'd test first
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• Pressure-test our energy, water-output, and cost assumptions
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Your first six months

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• Help shape and de-risk the design of our desk-scale prototype and the larger prototype that follows
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• Define test plans, instrumentation, and what "it works" means in numbers
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• Find ways to make the system more efficient, more robust, and cheaper to build and run
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• Explain the technology clearly to partners, customers, and non-engineers, and help shape how we communicate it
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Beyond that

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• Own the technical roadmap from prototype to pilot
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• Identify new applications and adjacent opportunities for the technology
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• Help recruit and lead the engineering team, and work with our technical advisors and outside engineering firms
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What we're looking for

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• Degree in chemical, mechanical, environmental, or process engineering, or a related field (a graduate degree is a plus, not a requirement)
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• Roughly 4–12 years of hands-on experience in water treatment, purification, or desalination
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• Working knowledge of multiple desalination technologies, including thermal processes (for example MED, MSF, or vapor compression)
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• Solid familiarity with membrane systems (RO, NF, ED) and why they dominate today
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• Strong grounding in thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, and process modeling (mass and energy balances, Python, MATLAB, Aspen, EES, or similar)
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• Experience taking a design from paper to a working rig: sizing, sourcing components, building, testing, and analyzing data
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• Clear writing and speaking: you can explain a flowsheet to an engineer in the morning and to a customer in the afternoon
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• Comfort with ambiguity, a small team, and moving fast
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Nice to have

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• Experience with large-scale heat rejection or industrial thermal management (power, process, or high-density computing facilities)
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• Exposure to seawater intake/outfall design, brine management, or marine environmental considerations
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• Techno-economic analysis: CAPEX, OPEX, and cost-per-cubic-meter modeling
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• Startup, R&D lab, or pilot-plant experience
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• Patent or invention record
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• Experience working in or with the Gulf region, or an Arabic speaker; Spanish speaker also of interest
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Who this isn't for

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This isn't a senior advisory role, and it isn't a role for someone who wants a large team on day one. It's for an engineer who wants to build, wants ownership, and wants to grow into leading the technology.

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How we'll work together

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• Phase 1, get started: part-time, about 10–20 hours per week, on an hourly independent contract, for roughly the first 2–3 months
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• Phase 2, ramp up: up to 40 hours per week on a monthly-retainer contract, for roughly the next 3–6 months
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• Phase 3, join full-time: employment (or the equivalent in your country) as engineering lead, when the work and funding support it
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We review fit and scope together at each step. Moving between phases is by mutual agreement, not automatic.

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Location: Remote, from anywhere and ideally with good overlap with Central European business hours. Some travel for prototype work, partner meetings, and periodic in-person sessions (likely Switzerland or the U.S.). Engagement terms will follow the rules of the country where you're based.

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Compensation: Competitive contract rate, based on experience. The title, pay, and long-term incentives grow as the role does. We'll discuss ranges in the first conversation.

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Confidentiality: Finalists sign a mutual confidentiality agreement before we share technical details.

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How to apply

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Send a CV and a short note (no more than one page) to View email address on ziprecruiter.com. In the note, tell us about one thing you designed, built, and tested yourself, and one thing that didn't go as planned and what you learned. Links to papers, patents, code, or project write-ups are welcome.

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We read every application, and we'll reply to everyone we speak with.