Test Engineering Manager

Charm Industrial

San Francisco, CA, USA

Posted on: 2024-10-25

Category: renewables

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Employment type:

Full time

Experience required:

Intermediate

Salary

Salary not provided

About the company:

Charm Industrial is working to return the atmosphere to 280 ppm CO₂. We design, build and operate a fleet of mobile fast pyrolyzers that convert ag and forest biomass residues into bio-oil for use in carbon removal and direct-reduced-iron steelmaking.

In 2020 our Chief Scientist and co-founder Shaun Meehan had two breakthroughs (bio-oil intermediate and bio-oil sequestration) that kickstarted the company. Within 10 months we completed our first carbon removal injection and in 2021 we completed more than 5,000 tons of CO₂e removal for customers like Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft.

About Charm

Our mission is to return the atmosphere to 280 ppm CO₂. We convert excess inedible biomass into carbon-rich bio-oil and inject it into underground storage for permanent carbon removal. At scale we can use bio-oil to make fossil-free iron.

Our carbon removal pathway took off in 2020 with initial purchases from customers like Stripe, Shopify & Microsoft. Since then we’ve scaled to thousands of tons of carbon removal, over a hundred employees, and now have three locations in San Francisco, Colorado, and Kansas. Come join us in 2024 as we aim to become one of the first companies to put 10,000 tons of carbon back underground!

We're looking to expand our team of ambitious creative and hands-on forward-thinking humans. We value psychological safety and collaboration. We take calculated risks and don't sweep mistakes under the rug; instead, we pin them to the wall and learn from them. We value that everyone’s unique backgrounds and perspectives shape their work. We encourage you to read our company values.

Come help us reverse climate change. Gigatons or bust!

About Charm

Our mission is to reverse climate change and return the atmosphere to 280 ppm CO₂, profitably. We convert waste biomass into carbon-rich bio-oil and inject it into permanent, underground storage as carbon removal, or reform the bio-oil to produce syngas for fossil-free steel.

Our carbon removal pathway took off in 2020 with initial purchases from customers like Stripe, Shopify & Microsoft. In 2021 and 2022, we delivered thousands of tons of carbon removal via off-the-shelf pathways, and also deployed our first R&D prototype pyrolyzer of our own. In the next 18 months, we'll build and deploy the next pyrolyzer revision, demonstrate our fossil-free ironmaking pilot, substantially expand our operations in Colorado and put thousands of tonnes of CO₂e underground.

We're looking to expand our team of ambitious creative and hands-on engineers, fabricators, operators, and forward-thinking humans. We value psychological safety and collaboration. We take calculated risks and don't sweep mistakes under the rug; instead, we pin them to the wall and learn from them. We value that everyone’s unique backgrounds and perspectives shape their work. We encourage you to read our company values.

Come help us reverse climate change. Gigatons or bust!

What We Offer

· Stock options

· Health benefits (medical, dental, vision)

· Traditional and Roth 401(k) with a 50% match on contributions up to 6%

· Paid time off, including parental leave

· A yearly professional development stipend

· Healthy snacks and lunches for onsite employees

· A sweet workplace with lots of space inside and out

· A chance to pivot into a role in climate!

Visa Sponsorship Policy

Since we are a small startup, certain accommodations for visa sponsorship may not be within our capability. At this time, Charm Industrial is only sponsoring E3 and TN visas.

Our Commitment

Charm Industrial is an equal opportunity employer with a firm commitment to growing our team in an inclusive way, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, medical condition, age, or veteran status. The consequences of climate change inherently affect some more than others, and we need a diverse team to help us save our little planet most effectively & justly. We are excited about all of those who choose to apply, and for those who end up joining us, to see how you better us as a team and company. We are more than the sum of our parts.

About the Role

We are looking for an engineering manager to support our pyrolyzer development by running our test team. Our test team is the SF team’s corollary to our operations team (located in CO), and the team’s job is to i) verify hardware meets design intent, and ii) help verify hardware is ready for operations by putting it through paces of representative testing.

You will work with the other engineering leads in SF and CO to ensure that the metric we care about, $/tCDR, is minimized by putting numbers to key parameters (like uptime, carbon conversion, throughput) of that metric via testing.

You will manage a team of engineers and technicians who are eager to solve Charm’s hardest problems through equipment validation. This often means redesigning and optimizing equipment as a result of the test learnings.

Your Responsibilities:

Prioritize the highest value testing to be performed based on the company priorities.

Oversee the design of test matrices, execution of testing, and dissemination of learnings for all testing performed by the test team. This can include design, build, and maintenance of test equipment as well.

Work cross-functionally with other engineering leads in SF and CO, ensuring that testing learnings are communicated widely and easily transferable to other stakeholders. In many cases, this means that you’ll communicate with both the design team working on the next pyrolyzer, and the operations engineering team that is responsible for the continuous improvement of our current pyrolyzers.

You Bring:

Proven ability to lead a fast-paced team to do the most critical work through shifting priorities.

An operations mindset to the team in SF, advocating through design reviews, iteration on hardware and process changes, and through the formation of representative test matrices to make sure we’re testing equipment for the operations environment.

Strong technical skills to bring a new perspective to our fast-paced brainstorming environment of turning a current problem into several potential solutions.

A hands-on approach to design and iteration. You lean towards trying and testing something fast over spending hours in front of a computer. You want to be hands on with hardware.

An eagerness to learn about all aspects of the pyrolysis process and our current pyrolysis product, which can include over 10% travel to experience our operations in CO.

Bonus, if You Bring:

Familiarity with thermal and chemical conversion processes.

Experience in industrial process development.

Experience with automation and controls systems.

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