R&D Engineer - 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

We\'re partnering with an early-stage, well-funded direct air capture (DAC) company developing an electrochemical approach to pulling CO₂ from the atmosphere. They\'re building the engineering team that will take this technology from bench scale toward a first pilot and beyond.

The air contactor — the unit that brings atmospheric air into contact with the capture solvent — is the front door of the entire process. It\'s a relatively mature technology in the abstract, but it has never been built and optimized around this specific chemistry. We\'re looking for the engineer who will own that.

You would be focused on the air contactor, working closely with both our electrochemistry team and the Principal Process Engineer. You\'d own the contactor as a subsystem: understanding what it needs to do, figuring out how to test and optimize it, building the rigs, running them, and turning the data into a roadmap.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment. The right person is as comfortable reasoning from first principles about mass transfer as they are building a rig and getting their hands dirty collecting the data.

What you\'ll do

• Understand the process and the target. Get deep on our capture chemistry, the system-level goals, and what the contactor actually needs to achieve.
• Define the test roadmap. Work with our internal experts to determine the right rigs, scales, and methods to generate the key data we need to design and optimize larger contactors. Figuring out what to test — and at what scale — is a core part of this job
• Design, build, and operate test rigs. Stand up experimental hardware, run it, and own the data end-to-end: collection, processing, and interpretation.
• Build and iterate the air contactor technology development roadmap as the picture sharpens.
• Investigate novel packing and other contactor-side levers for performance and cost.
• Contribute to chemistry and solvent decisions. You won\'t own solvent selection — that\'s a system-level tradeoff across the electrochemical unit, contactor, and desorber — but your data and judgment will heavily inform it, and you\'ll be a credible voice in those conversations.
• Feed contactor performance and constraints into system-level design led by the Principal Process Engineer.

What we\'re looking for

Must-haves

• Multi-tool capability. You can move between the theory (why the system behaves the way it does), the design (what to build and test), and the bench (building the rig, running it, and making sense of the numbers). This is the single most important attribute.
• Genuine curiosity about the fundamentals of gas-liquid contacting / absorption — whether from direct experience or a strong drive to master it quickly and rigorously.
• High driving force and self-direction. You define the work and move it forward; you\'re not waiting to be told what to do next.
• Startup fit. Comfortable with ambiguity, shifting priorities, and wearing multiple hats.
• A degree in mechanical, chemical, or process engineering (or equivalent), with 3-7+ years of hands-on experimental and/or scale-up engineering experience. [Level: targeting mid-level; open to more senior for the right multi-tool profile, or even more junior.

Nice-to-haves

• Direct experience with air contactors, absorption/packed columns, scrubbers, cooling towers, or similar gas-liquid contacting systems. (Valued, but not a hard requirement — curiosity and multi-tool ability matter more.)
• Mass-transfer modeling and/or process modeling experience.
• Experience standing up experimental rigs or test programs from scratch.
• Familiarity with DAC, carbon capture, or related climate-tech systems.