Senior Process Engineer

Intrinsic Foundries; Hazaribagh; On-site; INR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

Intrinsic Foundries in Hazaribagh seeks a Bioprocess Engineer to own and optimize bioprocesses, primarily for phototrophic algae and heterotrophic yeast. This role requires a strong background in bioreactor design and operation, as well as experience scaling processes from lab to commercial applications.

The ideal candidate will hold a degree in Chemical Engineering or Bioprocess Engineering and have 7-12 years of relevant experience. If you thrive in innovative environments and enjoy tackling challenges, we want to hear from you!

Qualifications

• 7–12 years in bioprocess, fermentation, biotech manufacturing or related fields.
• Real-time commissioning of at least one reactor or pilot.
• Comfortable working in industrial environments.

Responsibilities

• Own design and operation of bioreactors and fermenters.
• Develop and optimize bioprocesses for algae and yeast.
• Scale up processes from laboratory to commercial levels.

Skills

Bioreactor design and operation

Mass transfer fundamentals

Fermentation kinetics

DoE methodology

Process simulation

Education

ChemE, Biochemical Engineering or Bioprocess degree

MTech, MS, or PhD

Tools

Aspen

SuperPro Designer

PAT tools

Job description

We need a bioprocess engineer who can own a process. Someone who has run reactors at scale, knows why a culture crashed at 2am from the trend data, and gets excited about a process nobody has run before. We work with phototrophic algae today and heterotrophic yeast and algae in the pipeline. The interesting biology only matters if the process around it works.

This is a job for someone who thinks the textbook is a starting point, not an answer.

What you’ll own

• Upstream design and operation: photobioreactors and fermenters from 10 L to 10 kL, scaling toward 1 TPD
• Bioprocess fundamentals at scale: kLa, OUR, CER, shear, mixing time, heat removal, light penetration, CO₂ mass transfer
• Media design, feed strategies (batch, fed‑batch, continuous), nutrient optimisation, contamination control
• Downstream train: harvesting (centrifuge, membrane, DAF), cell disruption, drying, solvent and supercritical CO₂ extraction, purification
• Scale‑up logic from shake flask to bioreactor to pilot to commercial. Knowing what scales linearly, what doesn’t, and what to measure to find out
• Process control: pH, DO, temperature, CO₂ sparging, feed loops. PAT, soft sensors, model‑based control if you’re inclined
• Process economics: yield, OPEX/kg, utility intensity, debottlenecking studies

Where the “outside the box” actually matters

• Designing reactor geometries and operating modes nobody has tried on industrial flue gas
• Hybrid process trains (phototrophic + heterotrophic, or fermentation + chemical conversion)
• Coupling waste streams (CO₂, effluent NPK, lignocellulosic sugars) into productive feeds
• Using PAT, ML, or DoE in places the industry still runs on spreadsheets and gut feel
• Finding 20 % yield from a process the rest of the industry has stopped looking at

If your favourite engineering stories start with “everyone said this wouldn’t work,” we want to talk.

Engineering skills we need

Strong:

• Bioreactor design and operation (photobioreactors, stirred‑tank fermenters, airlift, bubble column)
• Mass transfer fundamentals: kLa correlations, sparger design, OTR/OUR balancing
• Fermentation kinetics: growth models, substrate inhibition, Monod and beyond
• DoE methodology (factorial, RSM, Plackett‑Burman). You design experiments, you don’t just run them
• Reading and producing P&IDs to ISA S5.1, PFDs, mass and energy balances
• Equipment sizing: pumps, heat exchangers, compressors, columns, tanks
• Process simulation in Aspen, SuperPro Designer, or equivalent

Nice to have

• Metabolic flux thinking, even at a high level. You don’t need to be a biologist but you should be curious about what the cell is doing
• PAT tools: Raman, NIR, capacitance probes, off‑gas analysis
• SCADA (Ignition, Wonderware, Siemens) and basic PLC logic
• CFD or process modeling for mixing, gas‑liquid mass transfer, light distribution
• Downstream process design: membrane, chromatography, crystallization
• Patent‑grade process IP work

Who you are

• 7–12 years in bioprocess, fermentation, biotech manufacturing, biopharma, industrial enzymes, food fermentation, biofuels, or specialty chemicals
• ChemE, Biochemical Engineering, or Bioprocess degree from a strong school (IIT, NIT, BITS, ICT, IISc, or international equivalent). MTech, MS, or PhD is a plus
• Personally commissioned at least one reactor or pilot. Real time on the floor, not just in front of a screen
• Comfortable on a cement or steel plant for a week straight
• Reads papers for fun. Has opinions about scale‑up methodology. Argues from data