Materials and Process Engineer

Amperesand; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Incentive stock options

Medical, vision, dental

401k

PTO and holidays

Commuter Benefits

Job summary

Amperesand is seeking a seasoned Materials Engineer to own the materials and process foundation for its medium voltage Solid State Transformer products. You will lead material selection, develop and qualify potting, coatings, casting, molding, and deposition processes, and drive validation and scalability for production.

The role requires deep expertise in polymers, resins, dielectrics, and coatings, plus hands-on development across lab and manufacturing environments.

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 development capability.
• Proven ability to drive material and process development by combining data-driven metrics with fundamental mechanisms.
• Extensive hands-on laboratory and production floor experience, including leading characterization and validation activities.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with external vendors and internal teams to take a process from initial feasibility to repeatable production.
• Demonstrated ability to independently resolve complex, cross-domain technical challenges and drive cross-functional trade-off decisions.

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.

Skills

Materials processing

Polymers

Resins

Coatings

Dielectrics

Characterization

Thin film deposition

Laboratory methods

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering

Tools

Thin film deposition

Coating equipment

Job description

Company Overview

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

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 development capability.
• Proven ability to drive material and process development by combining data-driven metrics with fundamental mechanisms.
• Extensive hands-on laboratory and production floor experience, including leading characterization and validation activities.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with external vendors and internal teams to take a process from initial feasibility to repeatable production.
• Demonstrated ability to independently resolve complex, cross-domain technical challenges and drive cross-functional trade-off decisions.

Bonus Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related field with 5+ years of industry materials processing experience.
• Experience in the development of dielectric materials.
• Deep understanding of partial discharge, dielectric breakdown, and electrical insulation materials.
• Exposure to medium-voltage power electronics systems.
• Experience taking a material or process through qualification for a high-reliability product in power, aerospace, automotive, or semiconductor.
• Experience supporting products from R&D through production release.
• Experience contributing to patents or novel materials and process techniques.

SF Pay Range
$120,000—$160,000 USD

Reno Pay Range
$115,000—$150,000 USD

Pay Disclosure & Benefits

Compensation will be determined based on experience, location, and other factors permitted by law. The benefits outlined below apply exclusively to employees located in the United States.

• Competitive Salary + Incentive Stock Options
• Medical, vision, and dental benefits for employees and their dependents, effective from the start of hire
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance
• 401k retirement savings plan through Empower
• Employees receive paid time off (PTO), paid sick days, and paid company holidays
• Commuter Benefits
• 100% paid maternal leave (12 weeks) and paternal leave (6 weeks)

Singapore-based employees receive benefits in accordance with local government provisions.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Amperesand is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law. Amperesand is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you need an accommodation at any point during the interview process.