Hydrometallurgical Engineer

VoltForce; New York (NY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

VoltForce is seeking a Hydrometallurgical Engineer for an early-stage critical-minerals technology company. You will help rethink bench-scale chemistries moving from bench-scale to pilot scale, collaborating with machine learning, process modeling, and lab automation alongside the commercial team to build a highly automated platform for hydrometallurgical development.

This founding-team seat on a lean, interdisciplinary team welcomes experience across multiple disciplines and requires the

Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Chemical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Chemistry, or related discipline.
• 2+ years of industrial hydrometallurgical, separations, or process development experience.
• Experience independently designing, executing, and documenting bench-scale experimental campaigns.
• Understanding of core hydrometallurgical unit operations: leaching, solid–liquid separation, solvent extraction, precipitation.
• Ability to perform process calculations, analyze experimental data, and draw sound technical conclusions.
• Comfort working across laboratory, process engineering, analytical, and customer-facing responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, execute, and analyze bench- and pilot-scale solvent extraction experiments that guide process development and scale-up.
• Help set technical strategy for moving programs from vial-scale screening through pilot testing, including campaign priorities and scale-up criteria.
• Work with customers and commercial teams to define technical needs, run campaigns on customer feedstocks, present results, and scope subsequent phases.
• Inform technical trade-off studies, including scoping-level capital and operating cost estimates.

Skills

Hydrometallurgical experience

Bench-scale campaign design

Data analysis

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Process calculations

Customer-facing communication

Education

B.S. or M.S. in Chemical/Metallurgical/Chemistry

Tools

METSIM

SysCAD

HSC Chemistry

Aspen Plus

ICP-OES/ICP-MS workflows

Job description

We are working with an early-stage critical-minerals technology company on the search for a Hydrometallurgical Engineer to help rethink how new separation chemistries move from the bench to pilot scale.

Location: On-site, New York City

Employment type: Full-time, salaried

Team: Engineering (founding team)

About The Company

Our client is applying science, computation, and AI to industrial chemistry, starting with critical minerals. The goal is to cut the time and cost it takes to bring new mineral processing capacity online, which matters for energy, computing, and defense supply chains. The team pairs experimental work with modeling and machine learning, so lab results feed directly into the next round of design and the path to industrial deployment.

About The Role

As a Hydrometallurgical Engineer you will help rethink how new chemistries move from bench-scale to pilot. You will work closely with experts in machine learning, process modeling, and lab automation, alongside the commercial team, to build out a highly automated platform for hydrometallurgical development.

This is a founding-team seat on a lean, interdisciplinary team, and experience spanning multiple disciplines is welcome.

Responsibilities

• Design, execute, and analyze bench- and pilot-scale solvent extraction experiments that guide process development and scale-up.
• Help set technical strategy for moving programs from vial-scale screening through pilot testing, including campaign priorities and scale-up criteria.
• Work with customers and commercial teams to define technical needs, run campaigns on customer feedstocks, present results, and scope subsequent phases.
• Inform technical trade-off studies, including scoping-level capital and operating cost estimates.
  
  

Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Chemical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Chemistry, or a related discipline.
• 2+ years of industrial hydrometallurgical, separations, or process development experience.
• Experience independently designing, executing, and documenting bench-scale experimental campaigns.
• Understanding of core hydrometallurgical unit operations, including leaching, solid–liquid separation, solvent extraction, and precipitation.
• Ability to perform process calculations, analyze experimental data, and draw sound technical conclusions.
• Comfort working across laboratory, process engineering, analytical, and customer-facing responsibilities.
• Clear interdisciplinary communication and the curiosity to quickly learn and execute in new domains.
• Ability to prioritize, execute, and collaborate with a high degree of agency, a willingness to be wrong, and the ambition to build something that has never existed before.
• Trust, humor, rigor, and an excitement to work in a scrappy, interdisciplinary early-stage environment.
  
  

Nice-to-have

• Familiarity with ICP-OES or ICP-MS workflows.
• Experience with process simulation tools such as METSIM, SysCAD, HSC Chemistry, or Aspen Plus.
• Experience with chromatography, adsorbents, or other solid-phase separation materials.
• Experience working with lanthanide solvent extraction.
• Experience in the mining industry.
• Exposure to pilot operations, equipment specification, or techno-economic analysis.
  
  

It's ok if you don't check all the boxes. We hire for the capacity and the drive to learn and grow. If there is something you haven't done, but you are capable, please apply!

VoltForce does not work on a Corp-to-Corp (C2C) basis.