Materials Development Engineer
Solena Materials
We’re a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers and software developers from diverse backgrounds brought together by a passion for creating advanced materials for our customers. We are now looking for a Materials Development Engineer or Senior Materials Development Engineer to join our growing team. Following our post-seed fundraise, Solena is entering a scale-up phase — shifting from a lab-focused setup to pilot-scale facilities for our new protein-based fibres. We’re now focused on onboarding exceptional talent with the right experience to support this important transition.
Role responsibilities:
- Develop scalable production processes for protein-based fibres including wet fibre spinning
- Operate and optimise our pilot wet fibre spinning line, and improve our spinning process to increase fibre performance and throughput
- Conduct a range of materials testing and characterisation studies, including SEM, XRD, FTIR, polarised Raman, TGA, rheometry, and textile testing
- Work closely and flexibly with our interdisciplinary team of materials scientists, engineers, and synthetic biologists
- Design and carry out experiments independently
- Propose hypotheses, coordinate experiments and test them efficiently
Qualifications & experience required
- BSc or higher (MSc or PhD) in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science, Textile Engineering or equivalent work experience
- High levels of creativity and experience in planning experiments
- Significant research experience
- Good project management experience
- Experience in handling chemicals
- Good documentation practice
- Excellent communication skills
- Excellent Microsoft Office skills including Excel, Word, SharePoint and PowerPoint
- Experience with analysing data using Python or other programming languages
Nice to have:
- understand protein structure and chemistry
- experience of materials and/or textile characterisation (e.g. moisture wicking, breathability and abrasion testing)
- experience working in fibre spinning processes
- a tinkerer mentality - you like to build and fix things on your own
We offer:
- Competitive salary
- Full time position with flexible working hours
- Generous pension contribution and benefits
- Regular team events
- Exciting and dynamic start-up environment in West London
- A commitment to equality and valuing diversity
- Subscription to Perlego, a searchable digital library
- LinkedIn Learning training courses