Air Contactor R&D Engineer for DAC Scale-Up

Climate People; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Climate People is seeking a hands-on engineer to own the air contactor development for an electrochemical direct air capture program in San Francisco. You will design, test, and optimize rigs, collect data end-to-end, and translate findings into a practical roadmap as the team moves toward pilots and scale.

You must be comfortable in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and bring strong multi-tool capability.

Qualifications

• Degree in mechanical, chemical, or process engineering (or equivalent).
• 3–7+ years of hands‑on experimental or scale‑up engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Define the test roadmap for air contactor development.
• Design, build, and operate test rigs and collect data end-to-end.
• Build and iterate the air contactor technology development roadmap.
• Investigate novel packing and other contactor-side levers.
• Contribute to solvent decisions with data-driven input.
• Feed contactor performance into system-level design led by the Principal Process Engineer.

Skills

Multi-tool ability

Gas-liquid contacting

Self-direction

Startup mindset

Experimentation

Education

Bachelor's in Mechanical/Chemical/Process Engineering

Job description

Climate People is seeking a hands-on engineer to own the air contactor development for an electrochemical direct air capture program in San Francisco. You will design, test, and optimize rigs, collect data end-to-end, and translate findings into a practical roadmap as the team moves toward pilots and scale.

You must be comfortable in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and bring strong multi-tool capability.