Senior Reactor Engineer

About General Flash

General Flash is re-inventing the process to convert metal oxides to metal. We are a dedicated team of builders - experts in materials, physics, chemistry, process and hardware engineering - united in our goal to re-shore metal production for critically important metals. We’re looking for exceptional candidates to join us!

The Role

We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Senior Reactor Engineer to serve as a key contributor to the design and operation of our metal production systems and processes. In this role you will work closely with a team of world-class engineers and scientists to develop hardware concepts and bring them to life as prototypes and hardened manufacturing systems deployable at scale. Key to this role is experience with design at extremes of temperature (material selection, reliability, thermal expansion, heat flow and management), harsh chemical environments, and non-standard material flows (powders and other finely-divided solids). We iterate quickly, and you will be expected to rapidly implement solutions for development- and production-level systems that are reliable, cost-effective, and safe.

Primary Responsibilities

• Own component- and assembly-level features of a larger reactor system: design, construction, manufacturing, and implementation.

• Work closely with engineers and scientists to formulate highly-detailed and hardened designs from functional requirements and back-of-the-envelope concepts.

• Implement designs and design improvements in cloud-based CAD software with company-established workflows and industry best-practices (no broken feature trees).

• Use sound engineering analysis and first-principles thinking (hand calculations, prototype testing, simulations, AI-assistant tools) to inform design decisions and hardware implementation.

• Design, build, and test component-, subsystem- and system-level hardware.

• Develop drawings and drawing packages for external fabricators and prototype houses using GD&T (ASME Y14.5) and internal best practices.

Required Qualifications

• B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or a related field with 7+ years of experience (or equivalent)

• Demonstrated history of precision design and use of precision design principles (e.g., exact kinematic constraint, thermal constraint, error compensation)

• Excellent understanding of heat, momentum, and mass transfer processes and implications for mechanical design (thermal expansion/stresses, modes of heat and mass transfer), and commonly-used off-the-shelf solutions.

• Strong familiarity with a variety of actuators and motion system components: servos, steppers, power transmission, kinematic hardware.

• Expertise with measurement systems and data-acquisitions platforms, and a demonstrated history of using such systems to inform mechanical design and satisfy design requirements.

• Demonstrated history of constructing and utilizing test stands to verify design requirements and torture-test components and systems to assure reliability and function over component lifetimes.

• Successful track record of designing and performing quick, instrumented hypothesis-driven experiments to inform reactor design, development, and manufacturing.

• Working knowledge of materials behavior for standard engineering materials, and familiarity with engineering materials used in extreme environments (including refractories, super alloys, and engineering ceramics).

• Fluency with a variety of fabrication techniques and technologies to evaluate design complexity, manufacturing ease, tolerance, and cost.

• Expertise with commonly-used fabrication techniques for metals (mill/lathe, CNC machining, grinding, welding, sheet metal, laser cutting),

Preferred Qualifications

• M.S. or Ph.D. in an engineering or scientific discipline with a focus on system development and design

• Experience defining and designing controls systems for motion systems.

• Familiarity with materials handling equipment and processes for gases, liquids, and finely-divided solids (granular materials), including vacuum conveyance.

• Experience with material conversion technologies (e.g., heat treat furnaces, sintering, hydrometallurgy, electrometallurgy, laser and electron beam-based techniques, semiconductor manufacturing, etc…)

• Experience with the design and operation of high-throughput manufacturing systems.

• Familiarity with the operation of engineering materials at extremes of temperature and in harsh chemical environments.

• Experience with the design of hardware for safety-critical applications, including the use of safety controllers, fail-safe and inherent safe design, and hazard analysis.

• Use of Python (or equivalent) for the design, analysis, and interpretation of data from automation and test platforms.

Work Environment and Safety

This is a 100% in person position, at our location in Cambridge, MA.

This position involves hands-on work in a laboratory with equipment that may operate at high temperatures, under vacuum, with high electrical power, and may utilize flammable compressed gases. Training and appropriate protective equipment will be provided.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary, commensurate with, and based on, skills and experience.

• Equity sign-on package.

• Mentorship and the opportunity to grow across engineering disciplines.

• Work in a small team, where your contributions directly shape our technology.

• Benefits: Employee health insurance and dental plan.

• Highly collaborative, 100% in-person environment

• Paid holidays and flexible PTO

We do not work with recruiting or staffing agencies and will not pay fees for unsolicited referrals.

General Flash Corp. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.