Equipment Engineer - Materials Handling

Who You Are

As an Equipment Engineer at Sila, you will use your expertise in industrial bulk solids-handling equipment to make a significant impact on our manufacturing process. Your experience in powder rheology, equipment design, deployment, installation, maintenance, and safety standards will be key in the detailed design, installation, and factory/site acceptance of key equipment at Sila. Join our team to make important technology selections, plan installations, and qualify equipment for the production of our advanced anode materials.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Develop Sila’s requirements and specifications for efficiency, material holdup, leakage / air- and dust-tightness, serviceability, reliability, contamination of product, etc and ensure they are aligned with requirements, including regulatory requirements for combustible dust.
• Identify suppliers and technology options; down-select via methodical scorecard and data collection. Development qualification plans, and support onsite or vendor-site auditing and trials.
• Review detailed designs to ensure conformance to requirements and specifications. Work with controls teams to ensure controls deployment and acceptance test plans are consistent with functional requirements.
• Develop operational SOP. Train technicians on standard processes for installation, deployment, and maintenance.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements

• B.S. degree, and 4+ years of proven experience, 2+ years particularly with powder-handling equipment. Note that experience with pharmaceutical or food powders is largely transferable to the battery material industry.
• Practical experience with powder-handling equipment such as: conveyors, valves, hoppers, mixers, de-agglomerators, samplers.
• Ability to define test plans to qualify equipment to meet specifications.
• Awareness of applicable standards and codes, and best practices for reliability and safety, ideally including those applicable to combustible dust.
• Knowledge of controls in an industrial environment.
• Solid understanding of powder characterization methods for particle size distribution, rheological parameters, and other characteristics is a plus.

Physical Demands and Working Conditions

• Pass a respirator fit test and be able to wear respiratory protection daily
• Wear personal protective equipment including, but not limited to, a lab coat, gloves, safety glasses, and steel toe safety shoes
• Move items up to 50 lbs with the assistance of lift equipment and carts
• Move long distances (such as from building to building) and be stationary for extended periods of time
• Reach low shelves or items on the floor
• Enter spaces narrower than 3 feet
• Climb stairs or over containment walls
• Detailed and repetitive handling of a range of material quantities
• Operate a computer and other office equipment, such as a laptop, copier/printer, etc in a fixed location
• Apply established protocols in a timely manner
• Complete tasks in a noisy environment
• Repeating motions that may include the wrists, hands and/or fingers
• Standing in a stationary position 80% of the time

The starting base pay for this role is between $123,000 and $156,000 at the time of posting. The actual base pay within these ranges depends on many factors, such as education, experience, and skills. Base pay is only one part of Sila’s driven Total Rewards package that can include benefits, perks, equity, and bonuses. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future