Manufacturing Engineer III - Chemistry Focus

Work Schedule

Environmental Conditions

Job Description

Position: Manufacturing Engineer III – Chemistry / Resin & Column Focus

Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Schedule: M-F, Days

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you’ll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world’s toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe or helping find cures for cancer.

How will you make an impact?

As a Manufacturing Engineer III with a chemistry focus, you will provide senior-level manufacturing engineering support for resin synthesis, resin qualification (QC), and chromatography column production. You will play a key role in supporting NPDI products onto the factory floor, ensuring new and existing products are manufacturable, validated, automated where appropriate, and sustained in a compliant manufacturing environment.

This role bridges chemistry-based process understanding and hands-on manufacturing execution. It is a factory-facing ME role, not a pure R&D or polymer chemist position.

What you will do

• Provide manufacturing engineering ownership for resin synthesis, functionalization, conditioning, and handling processes supporting column production.
• Support resin qualification and QC activities, including defining acceptance criteria and troubleshooting OOS, yield, or performance issues.
• Serve as a Manufacturing Engineering lead for NPDI programs, supporting technology transfer, pilot builds, engineering runs, and first production execution.
• Own and execute process and product validations for new designs and changes to existing products, including authoring protocols and reports (IQ/OQ/PQ).
• Coordinate cross-functional testing activities to ensure timely execution, data integrity, and stakeholder alignment.
• Support and improve automated and semi-automated equipment, working closely with Automation and Controls teams on PLC-based systems and control strategies.
• Apply chemistry and chemical engineering fundamentals to troubleshoot processes, interpret analytical/QC data, and drive process improvements.
• Lead root-cause investigations, CAPAs, and change control activities related to chemistry, equipment, or process changes.
• Develop and maintain SOPs, work instructions, PFMEAs, validation documentation, and technical reports.
• Support chemical safety assessments and hazard reviews in collaboration with EHS.
• Drive continuous improvement using PPI / Lean methodologies to improve yield, robustness, cycle time, and manufacturability.
• Support process development activities working with RD and Resin Synthesis to improve manufacturing process, equipment, and tooling requirements.  
• Design custom fixtures and tooling to support manufacturing.

REQUIREMENTS:

How will you get here?

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry, Materials Engineering, or related field required & 5+ years of experience
• Advanced degree & 3+ years of experience

Experience

• Experience in manufacturing engineering or process engineering within a regulated manufacturing environment.
• Hands-on experience supporting chemistry-based manufacturing processes.
• Experience supporting NPDI / NPI products into manufacturing.
• Familiarity with automation and PLC-driven manufacturing equipment preferred.
• Experience with resins, polymers, particle-based materials, or chromatography media strongly preferred.
• Prior resin synthesis experience is a nice-to-have, not required.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Strong foundation in chemistry and chemical engineering fundamentals (reaction chemistry, mixing, mass transfer, solvent systems).
• Experience with process validation, troubleshooting, RCA, and change control.
• Knowledge of lean manufacturing principles and tools.
• Comfortable working with automated manufacturing systems and cross-functional engineering teams.
• Strong technical documentation, communication, and organizational skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• CAD experience (SolidWorks, AutoCad)

Compensation and Benefits

This position may also be eligible to receive a variable annual bonus based on company, team, and/or individual performance results in accordance with company policy. We offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package that our U.S. colleagues and their families can count on, which includes:

• A choice of national medical and dental plans, and a national vision plan, including health incentive programs

• Employee assistance and family support programs, including commuter benefits and tuition reimbursement

• At least 120 hours paid time off (PTO), 10 paid holidays annually, paid parental leave (3 weeks for bonding and 8 weeks for caregiver leave), accident and life insurance, and short- and long-term disability in accordance with company policy

• Retirement and savings programs, such as our competitive 401(k) U.S. retirement savings plan

• Employees’ Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) offers eligible colleagues the opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount

For more information on our benefits, please visit: https://jobs.thermofisher.com/global/en/total-rewards