Description
"Une difficulté est une lumière. Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil."
- Paul Valéry
About Atum Works
Modern computing has reached a physical limit. We name it: feature density can no longer rise on a single plane. The industry stacks two-dimensional layers, and costs compound with every layer added as a result. This is not an incidental cost. The very path every advance now takes is the same path that makes advance unaffordable, setting a ceiling on what computing is and can become. Atum Works is building the world's first scalable 3D lithography foundry: a way to pattern metal and dielectric volumetrically, over large areas, at a cost flat lithography cannot match. We are aiming it where it is worth most, at the high-value parts of the semiconductor and GPU supply chain, and carrying it to manufacturing scale against real customer orders. This is not bolting a feature onto flat lithography; we are sublating it, for we preserve what it does well while raising the process into a dimension it could never reach without us. Work of this kind is not carried by sheer scale, nor is it solved by time itself. Work of this kind is carried by a small, disciplined core that becomes conscious of the whole problem. We are looking for the next person who will join this core. There is no need for anointment into the domain to belong to it. Take the problem in itself and make it for itself; become one of the minds that carries it forward with intent. We are early. The work moves from bench results to a reproducible process, and from there to a pilot line for high-volume manufacturing. As we relocate to a larger facility with a broader set of instruments for this transition, the choices made now overdetermine what becomes possible later. What is public about us is intentionally thin; yet our thesis is visible, and the rest you can understand by speaking with us directly.
Role Summary
As an Electrochemical Process Engineer, you will own the electrochemical deposition that builds our 3D structures: developing the chemistry, proving it out, and carrying it from bench to pilot line. We are looking for an engineer with chemical-engineering judgment to motivate the appropriate experiments, conduct the right analyses, and diagnose results that are inconsistent or unexpected. On a small team, you will own both the design and the execution of experiments. This is a hands-on, bench-based position rather than an advisory one.
Most of the work is experimental problem-solving in systems whose behavior is not known in advance. You will identify what most limits performance, reliability, or yield; use a model to form a hypothesis; design an experiment to test it; procure and assemble what the experiment requires; run it; analyze the results; and iterate. Electrochemical deposition is the immediate domain, but it is not the sole criterion by which we evaluate candidates; sound experimental judgment matters more to us than an exact match to electroplating.
The role can be scoped from junior individual contributor through senior. Depending on your background and experience, your role may grow to include hiring and leading a team. You will have substantial autonomy, together with the resources to acquire the equipment you require and to engage outside vendors and laboratories.
What You Will Do
- Develop and tune the deposition chemistry that governs deposit quality, working from both in-house formulations and commercial supplier baselines.
- Build and modify experimental apparatus, including the circulation, heating, monitoring, and filtration of solutions, and prototype both new chemistries and new hardware.
- Run experiments and characterize materials and processes across a range of techniques, among them electron microscopy, profilometry, spectroscopy, and electrochemical methods such as voltammetry (including at a rotating disk electrode) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
- Analyze results and quantify yield, performance, and the associated uncertainty, and document methods and findings clearly so that colleagues can build upon them. Analysis and documentation are integral to the role, not secondary to it.
- Produce and test structures daily, and convert what proves effective into a process that others can reproduce as we scale toward the pilot line.
Location & Compensation
Mountain View, California. Full-time and on-site, as the work is hands-on. Compensation is $180,000–$300,000 depending on experience, plus meaningful early-employee equity. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, and a 401(k). We compensate for the experience and capability a candidate brings.
Requirements
What We Are Looking For
We are looking for a way of thinking, not a stock of facts. A problem here almost always arrives in the abstract. The work is to make it concrete: to gather the many determinations that govern the process into the one working understanding of how it behaves. A rule prepared in advance cannot reach this; the understanding is built only by acting on the thing.
Strong candidates can point to occasions on which they have:
- Isolated a single variable to turn a vague effect into a determinate one, rather than changing several factors at once.
- Reconstructed why a process or apparatus was misbehaving from its actual behavior, not from assumption.
- Drawn a defensible conclusion from noisy data, including recognizing when the data did not yet support one.
- Built or modified apparatus so that a measurement became possible at all.
- Documented their work thoroughly enough that the understanding, not just the result, transferred to someone else.
- Carried a problem from first encounter to settled process without waiting to be assigned each step.
Electrochemistry or chemical-process experience is the most directly relevant background; that said, adjacent hands-on work in analytical chemistry, corrosion or battery electrochemistry, materials, or process systems can be equally compelling. We would rather hire an excellent experimentalist who can learn electrochemistry than a candidate with the exact background but weaker judgment at the bench
Required Qualifications
- Hands-on laboratory experience in which you have personally designed and conducted experiments, rather than only analyzing or directing the work of others.
- A foundation in chemical engineering, chemistry, or electrochemistry, analytical chemistry included. At a minimum, rigorous coursework in electrochemistry, analytical chemistry, or chemical engineering together with hands-on laboratory experience, and the capacity to grow into greater responsibility.
- A demonstrated record of experimental problem-solving in chemical, electrochemical, materials, or process systems.
- A bias toward reproducibility: turning a result that works once into a process that runs the same way every time.
- Care and rigor in handling hazardous chemicals, and full willingness to work at the bench within a fume hood.
- Sufficient facility with simple, descriptive models to reason quantitatively about your data and reach conclusions efficiently.
- A high degree of ownership and the ability to work independently.
We welcome candidates from the BS through the PhD level, and from industry as well as academia. A PhD is not required, and its absence is not a disadvantage. What matters is the evidence behind the points above.
Preferred Qualifications
We do not expect any single candidate to have all of the following.
- Direct experience with electrochemical metal deposition, including conformal or void-free fill.
- Tuning of deposition additive packages, or formulation from supplier baselines.
- Hands-on characterization experience (for example, SEM, profilometry, voltammetry including rotating-disk-electrode methods, or impedance spectroscopy).
- Experience establishing new instruments, setups, or chemistries from the ground up.
- Experience with semiconductor interconnects, MEMS, or advanced manufacturing.
- Experience transitioning a process from research and development into manufacturing.
- Micro- or nanofabrication experience. This is a genuine advantage but is not expected; cleanroom or micro/nanofabrication experience is not necessary to be a strong fit.
To Apply
To apply, email miguel@atum.works with your resume.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of any protected characteristic under applicable federal, state, or local laws.
