Lead Equipment Engineer - (Material Handling Expert)

Who You Are

You are an expert Equipment Engineer and technical team leader, with at least 10 years working with powder handling equipment. You understand design-for-reliability and design-for-maintainability for powder-handling valves, hoppers, conveying systems, de-aggregators, mixers, and screeners. You have successfully led small teams to craft, deploy, install, and maintain such systems in a factory environment. You are proficient in safety standards applicable to such equipment, and consider it your job to become expert-level in the standards that apply to your equipment.

At Sila, you will be the engineering lead for a team of equipment engineers who are capable of testing performance and reliability of solids-handling equipment that is integrated into multiple steps of Sila’s manufacturing process. Your practical experience with factory deployment, reliability & maintenance will be a key value to this team’s ability to make wise selections of technologies, and for driving test plans to validate and qualify those technologies for production of Sila’s advanced anode material.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Ensure Sila’s requirements and specifications for efficiency, holdup, leakage / air- and dust-tightness, serviceability, reliability, contamination of product, etc are complete and aligned with requirements, including regulatory requirements for combustible dust.
• Identify suppliers and technology options; down-select via methodical score carding and data collection (e.g. auditing, vendor trials, etc); and/or coach and teach team standard methodologies for doing so.
• Guide development qualification and reliability test plans for key components (valves, hoppers, conveyors, sampling systems, etc) including atmosphere control and dust control. Guide engineers responsible for building test apparatus. Key contributor and leader of DfX reviews for maintainability, reliability, operability. Drive requirements for reliability testing facilities.
• Drive spares strategy and policies.
• Review integrator 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.
• Review, edit and approve SOPs; and train and guide engineers and technicians standard processes for installation, deployment, and maintenance.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements

• B.S. degree, and 10+ years of related proven experience, particularly with powder-handling equipment. Experience with pharmaceutical or food powders is largely transferable.
• Solid understanding of powder-handling equipment: conveyors, valves, hoppers, mixers, de-agglomerators, samplers. Able to translate rheological data and functional requirements into design specifications for the above equipment.
• Extensive Knowledge of industry standards and codes, and best practices for reliability and safety, ideally including those applicable to combustible dust.
• Ability to build trust with team members and guide standard methodologies, based on both principles and experience.
• Knowledge of powder characterization methods for particle size distribution, porosity, and rheological parameters.
• Solid understanding of controls in an industrial environment.

Physical Demands and Working Conditions

• Can travel both domestically and internationally up to 25% on average.
• Deployment and solving phases of 1-2 months may require substantially more travel, up to 80% time per month.
• This job is located in Alameda, CA.
• Wear personal protective equipment including, but not limited to, a lab coat, gloves, safety glasses, respirator and steel toe safety shoes
• Move items up to 50 lbs with the assistance of lift equipment and carts
• Walk long distances (such as from building to building)

The starting base pay for this role is between $123,500 and $195,500 at the time of posting. The actual base pay depends on many factors, such as education, experience, and skills. Base pay is only one part of Sila’s competitive 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.