Materials and Process Engineer

amperesand; Reno (NV); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Amperesand in Reno, NV is seeking a Materials Engineer to own the materials and process foundation of our medium voltage Solid State Transformer products. You will lead material selection, develop and qualify processes, and drive characterization and failure analysis to prove they work.

This hands-on role partners with design, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain, serving as the technical authority on materials decisions across the platform, with a path from quarterly experiments to hardware

Qualifications

• Experience with coatings, casting, potting or thin film deposition.
• Knowledge of dielectric, electrical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical properties.
• Hands-on experimental skills and process development experience.

Responsibilities

• Own material selection across dielectrics, polymers, resins, composites, and coatings.
• Lead process development and qualification for potting, coating, casting, molding, and thin film deposition.
• Define processing parameters and work with manufacturing to establish production feasibility and control limits.
• Own materials characterization through a mix of in-house tests and third-party labs.
• Lead root-cause and failure analysis on materials and process issues across design, manufacturing, and field.

Skills

Material selection

Dielectrics

Polymers

Coatings

Process development

Characterization

Failure analysis

Root-cause analysis

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Materials Science & Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Job description

Company Overview

Amperesand is reinventing how the world powers its most critical systems.

We are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for infrastructure disruption. Electricity demand is skyrocketing, driven by AI factories, electric vehicles, and modern industrial growth. Energy supply is shifting to incorporate a more diverse mix of resources - including solar, gas, and batteries - at a massive scale.

And yet the power infrastructure behind our latest mega-projects hasn't meaningfully changed in nearly 100 years. Supply chains for today's infrastructure equipment can't match the pace and sophistication of critical energy projects. Amperesand is building hardware and software that rewrites this broken power infrastructure playbook to support a new era of energy abundance.

We've built a new class of intelligent, software‑defined power infrastructure products leveraging a decade of advanced medium voltage Solid State Transformer research that's now ready for commercial deployment.

Our products and solutions go far beyond the capabilities of traditional electrical equipment. We make power systems that are faster to deploy, dramatically smaller and more efficient, and capable of supporting modern, dynamic energy needs for tomorrow's most demanding energy consumers.

Scalable in‑house advanced manufacturing capability is our foundation for meeting timeline and quality expectation to serve infrastructure customers around the world.

Amperesand is led by breakthrough energy hardware development veterans and funded by top tier investors who share our vision of building a category-defining energy technology company.

With hubs in San Francisco, Reno, and Singapore, our global team is laser focused on building foundational technology to solve the most pressing problems in power infrastructure at scale.

Join us in building the power foundation of the future!

Role Summary

In this role, you will own the materials and process foundation of our medium voltage Solid State Transformer products. Solid state transformers concentrate high voltage, high frequency, and high power density into a fraction of the envelope of traditional equipment - and that makes the insulation system, the potting, the coatings, and the interfaces between them the deciding factor in whether a product passes qualification and survives twenty years in the field. You will lead material selection, develop and qualify the processes that put those materials into the product at rate, and drive the characterization and failure analysis that proves they work. You will partner closely with design, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain, and you will be the technical authority on materials decisions across the platform. This is hands‑on work on real hardware, with a short path from the experiment you run this quarter to the machine that ships next.

Responsibilities:

• Own material selection across dielectrics, polymers, resins, composites, and coatings, balancing electrical performance, manufacturability, cost, and long‑term reliability.


• Lead process development and qualification for potting, coating, casting, molding, thin film deposition, and related processes.


• Define key process parameters, processing conditions, and processing windows, and work with manufacturing and quality to establish production feasibility and control limits.


• Own materials characterization through a combination of in‑house testing and third‑party labs, including dielectric, thermal, mechanical, and chemical performance.


• Lead root‑cause and failure analysis on materials and process issues across design, manufacturing, and field domains, identifying the mechanism rather than the correlation.


• Source and co‑develop novel materials with suppliers when commercially available options cannot meet product requirements.


• Partner with external vendors and internal teams on process equipment selection and optimization to improve material properties and processing capability.


• Influence system‑level trade‑offs across insulation design, thermal management, packaging, power density, cost, and manufacturability.


• Ensure materials and process solutions scale across product variants and future platforms.


• Elevate materials engineering standards through rigorous design reviews, structured experimentation, and documentation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related field.


• 5+ years of experience in materials processing in production‑relevant settings, such as coating, injection molding, casting, potting, or thin film deposition.


• Direct experience and deep understanding of polymers, resins, particles, coating formulations, and composite materials, including how they cure, age, and fail.


• Strong command of fundamental materials properties - dielectric, electrical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical - and how they trade against one another.


• Strong hands‑on experimental skills and demonstrated process devel