Staff/Senior Scientist, R&D

AirMyne is a Series A Direct Air Capture (DAC) startup aiming to develop the most readily scalable and cost-competitive DAC process. By employing widely available industrial technologies and equipment, and by creating an energy-flexible process, we hope to overcome barriers to scale such as material supply chains, cost and availability of clean energy, and plant capacity factors. Our engineering team has spent the last four years refining our process into a full integrated system, and we are on our way to an outdoor pilot funded by the California Energy Commission. 

We are now looking to expand our team with a Staff/Senior Scientist, R&D. This person will manage the people and direction of the R&D team in order to consolidate complex data streams from lab- or bench-scale systems into process design decisions. The ideal candidate will have familiarity with turning engineering questions into targeted lab-scale experiments, refining analytical methods, building out and maintaining systems for data management, and managing the timeline and priorities of parallel efforts within the team.

What you’ll do:

• Conduct focused-studies as an independent contributor including instrument buildout, analytical development, and process scaleup
• Package R&D learnings into recommendations or specifications for unit operation development and integration by the Engineering team
• Create mathematical models of the process dynamics to an appropriate fidelity within constrained resources 
• Verify and improve the process model in collaboration with the Engineering team
• Manage an R&D team, maintaining a research program of several concurrent projects including defining project scope and timeline, and keeping projects on schedule
• Develop analytical methods for improved process characterization via titration and spectroscopy
• Manage AirMyne’s laboratory including instruments, purchasing, and adherence to safety protocols

Requirements:

• MS or PhD in chemistry, chemical engineering, or related field
• 5+ years of industry or startup experience. We’re looking for someone who can immediately own a project and improve our own organization/operations through past experience
• Experience purchasing and/or developing methods for analytical instrumentation
• Experience with crystallization
• Comfortable building lab-scale experimental set ups
• Strong data analysis, documentation, and communication skills
• Organized and disciplined about workplace safety and cleanliness

Bonus background:

• Experience translating lab-scale results to process development (ideally by completing at least one R&D to pilot cycle)
• Familiarity with Aspen or other process modeling is a plus
• Familiarity with cost or technoeconomic modeling

Why join us:

We are quickly reaching the 1.5°C threshold of global warming that the Paris Agreement targeted back in 2015, and it will require both decarbonization and large-scale carbon removal to slow and reverse our current pace of CO2 emissions. We are a team of scientists and engineers who are passionate and goal-driven, and we see a technology with a high potential for big impact. As a small team, every person’s input directly improves our technology. While we each specialize in different areas, we remain flexible with how we contribute to our shared goals, often learning new skills from each other and whatever resources we can find. Finally, we’re a tight team that value both our time together in the office and our personal time outside of work. If that sounds exciting to you, please reach out!

What we offer:

• Benefits plan includes subsidized health, dental, and vision plans with options for life insurance
• 401(k)
• Several company holidays per year including week-long holidays in November and December
• Flexible time-off policy with unlimited PTO
• Equity

This role is on-site AirMyne’s facility in West Berkeley. The estimated annual salary range for this role is $130,000 - $170,000 plus company equity.

NOTE: Not all custom questions may be relevant to your skillset or role - feel free to skip any that are outside your purview.