Process Development Engineer

Company Overview Lydian is developing the lowest cost sustainable fuels from waste CO2, water, and renewable electricity to decarbonize the aviation industry. Our breakthrough technology replaces oil and gas refining with fully electrified, modular, and flexible reactor systems that produce fuel with 95% lower emissions than traditional jet fuel. Since our founding in 2021, Lydian has achieved key milestones in record time, including the production of our first liquid fuel from our pilot system, capable of producing ~10,000 gallons of fuel per year for a fraction of the capital and time of alternative approaches. Lydian is backed by top climate investors including Congruent Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Union Square Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Grok Ventures, and Overture. We are building a motivated, diverse, and collaborative team that is passionate about addressing the growing climate crisis and is committed to excellence in their work. In particular, we look for tenacious people who are energized by solving the hardest, highest impact problems that come their way. Position Overview We are looking for a Process Development Engineer to help bring a new ceramic production process in-house. Today, key steps in producing our ceramic components are split between external vendors and manual, still-maturing internal workflows. You will own much of the hands-on production of these assemblies today while designing and building the automated, repeatable process we will run in-house tomorrow. This is a hands-on role built for someone who wants to learn a process by doing it. For the first 6–12 months you will be on the floor performing the manual production work, developing deep intuition for what drives yield and reliability. In parallel, you will use that intuition to design and build fixtures, test stands, and automation (via CAD and hands-on fabrication) that make the process fast, repeatable, and ready to scale. Over time, your role shifts from running the process to engineering it.

Responsibilities Own day-to-day production: Perform the full manual workflow for ceramics processing today including material prep, fixturing, joining, high-temperature thermal processing, and in-process quality control. Hitting build schedules while the process matures In-house the process: Lead the transition of critical processes from external vendors to internal production. Map current vendor and manual workflows, identify what to bring in-house first, and stand up the equipment, fixtures, and procedures to run them reliably Design test stands & fixtures: Design, build, and validate mechanical test stands, fixtures, and tooling for part and assembly characterization, taking them from CAD models and 2D drawings through hands-on fabrication and commissioning Automate & instrument: Design and implement automation and automated data collection for the process, including upgrading measurement systems and building programmatic interfaces to test and process equipment Define the long-term process: Translate what you learn on the floor into a scalable in-house process. Defining process parameters, work instructions, tooling, and in-process quality checks that make builds repeatable and yield predictable Characterize & troubleshoot: Characterize sub-components and assemblies, run root-cause analysis on defects and yield loss, and drive measurable process improvements Document & standardize: Write and maintain SOPs, calibrate measurement equipment, and manage inventory (stock, ordering, incoming QC, non-conformity) for the assemblies you produce Build-Test-Learn: Foster a culture where every failure is documented and results in a concrete improvement to the process, tooling, or design