Job Title: Principal Process Engineer
Location: Centred around London, various UK sites, international opportunities, flexible trust based work policy.

Full Time/Part Time: Full Time

Benefits:

• Employee Share Option Scheme
• Above industry standard holiday (30 days vs 22-25)
• Close office over Xmas where possible
• £500 personal development grant every year
• Fully funded training and professional development opportunities
• Unlimited mental health support
• 3 months of equal Paternity or Maternity leave
• Monthly rewilding donation on your behalf
• Cycle to Work Scheme

About Mission Zero Technologies:

MZT is a hardware technology start-up pioneering a breakthrough Direct Air carbon Capture (DAC) technology that can scrub CO2 from the air using a fraction of the energy compared to incumbent technologies developed by the likes of Carbon Engineering and Climeworks. In the past three years, MZT has evolved its technology from concept to pilot plant scale, successfully raising over £8m from a mixture of private and government funding. MZT’s technology is a hybrid of approaches, combining efficient solution-phase capture of CO2 with a continuous and compact electrochemical separation technology.

Mission Zero’s work is guided by our principles of bold curiosity, problem solving acumen and hope for the future. We strive to realise a world where humanity has new tools to fight climate change, permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce everyday products such as concrete blocks or fuels from atmospheric carbon emissions. To do this we need to realise a decentralised Gigaton supply chain for CO2 sourced directly from the atmosphere.

The opportunity:

You have the opportunity to join MZT at a pivotal point in our company's history - our transition from an early-stage R&D startup into a product offering, revenue-generating company poised to rapidly scale our direct-air capture technology across the world.

MZT is hiring a Principal Process Engineer to help us further develop our potentially word-healing carbon removal technology. You will have the ambition to lead a team in process design, engineering delivery, scale-up, commissioning and operation of our technology.

In this role you will inherit our first generation technology design, deploy across multiple projects, and then start the process of improving the technology for our next generation of DAC devices. Alongside our engineering partners, you will also be responsible for ensuring the effective deployment, hook-up and interfacing with host sites.

You will be a key leader in the Delivery team, shepherding the process design from our existing emergent technology generation toward novel next generations, through to site deployment at scales of 250 teCO2/year at our Norfolk and Canadian sites and 5,000 teCO2/year and beyond over the coming years at future project sites. This will require you to interface with multiple stakeholders internally and externally.

The role will be centred around our headquarters in East-Central London, but with periodic day/week assignments to our various emerging international sites, European suppliers and further international sites in the medium to long term as we expand the business globally.

Our vision for our early stage employees is that they own the business with us (literally), grow it with us and become part of the collective story of Mission Zero, taking a catalytic role in its early history and the fight against climate change.

What you’ll be responsible for:

• Leading, guiding, reviewing and developing safe process designs internally and with external contractors across numerous MZT projects from 50 te/year research units to 5,000 te/year scale up projects and beyond.
• Specification, delegation, delivery and review of all required process, commissioning, and relevant interdisciplinary design deliverables.
• Interfacing with all key external vendors for process technology packages, especially customers and site hosts.

• Become the company expert in commissioning readiness, pre-commissioning and commissioning execution;
• Be the technical lead in all design and pre-commissioning safety reviews;
• Become a trend-setter for our positive, people-centred culture where all opinions are heard and valued.
• Applying fundamental engineering knowledge to guide, oversee, review and revise component heat & material balances, comparing against real experimental results.
• Comparing experimental results against simulated experiments to verify the model.
• Becoming an expert in our technology and approach.

• Key process engineering liaison with the project management team in technical delivery of detailed plant design and analysis for pilot and commercial systems, including packaging philosophy and in the interfaces between contractor team engineering disciplines.

• Exemplify leadership in process engineering from engineering delivery to operations of new to market plants to R&D in the lab to commercial development based on your self-directed interests.
• Support recently graduated hires, leading in key aspects of process engineering design, interfacing with teams across the company in our squad system.
• Challenge yourself and team members to think differently - question previous results in a positive, non-judgemental way, finding pragmatic solution-oriented improvements to MZT tech & approach.

You will also support our recently graduated hires, helping them in key aspects of process engineering design in a real, dynamic, rapidly changing context. In this guise, you will be a key person shaping the ‘Lifesavers’ programme where MZT will build a pipeline of talent from graduation through to chartership and beyond.

The Ideal Candidate will possess:

• 10 years minimum industrial experience delivering projects with significant process design and commissioning content across multiple industries.

• Chartered engineering status with IChemE or equivalent;

• Experience and understanding of the full machine/product development cycle (Conceptualisation, design, delivery/commissioning and decommissioning),

• Desire to build a long-term career in the cleantech space with Mission Zero Technologies.

• A passion for developing technical solutions for the world's greatest challenges.

• Exemplary ability to perform independent research when working with ambiguity or incomplete data sets to arrive at an appropriate conclusion;

• Field-leading practical skills, comfortable with both hands-on work and desk-based tasks. Comfortable working with ambiguity.

• Expert fluency working with process safety hazards and risk identification;
• Expert fluency with GAs (General Arrangement Drawings), 3D models, all typical engineering deliverables including Process Flow Diagrams, Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) etc.;

• Appreciation of good design for minimal maintenance approaches.
• Expertise in HAZID, HAZOP, SIL, LOPA & FMEA.
• Breadth of exposure to process unit operations and mechanical packaged systems extending to MV electrical installations and transformer packages.

Also desirable:

• Commissioning experience of pilot systems Mechanical / electrical inter-discipline specialism in undergraduate / postgraduate studies.
• >15 years experience in relevant industries.
• Holistic control systems theory and specification.
• Understanding of materials in the context of chemical and weathering resistance.
• Demonstrated experience working with electrodialysis / electrolytic processes and/or absorption, scrubbing, continuous gas-liquid systems, compression, liquefaction.
• Experience designing, running and supporting research scale, pilots and/or commercial plants.
• Experience with engineering supply chain management.
• Understanding of fundamental electrochemistry principles and background industrial chemistry knowledge.
• Familiarity with processes handling CO2.
• Formal training / qualifications in e.g. machine safety / CMSE.