Research Engineer (Chemical)

Background

The shipping industry is notoriously difficult to decarbonize, accounting for ~3% of global CO2 emissions. If it were a country, it would be the 6th largest emitter in the world (ranking just above Germany).

Recent global regulations from the International Maritime Organization require ships to reduce their CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030, but there are currently no clean solutions available for them to do so. Alternative power sources like hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and onboard batteries are still 10-20 years away from maturity for large ships and energy efficiency solutions can only reduce 5-10% of CO2 emissions.

About Seabound

Seabound captures CO2 emissions from ships.

We are building a retrofittable device that traps the CO2 from a ship’s exhaust gas. It has the potential to be one of the simplest, safest, and most affordable solutions for zero-emissions shipping.

To date, we have proven the concept on land and tested our capture device on a 3200 TEU container ship. We have secured 6 letters of intent from major shipowners to purchase our systems, raised ~$4.5M USD from top investors including Lowercarbon Capital and Y Combinator, and won a competitive grant from the UK government in the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition. We are now recruiting a Research Engineer specializing in Chemistry to join our engineering team to help optimize and scale this new category of maritime climate tech.

Roles and responsibilities

To support our mission of decarbonizing shipping, you will be the resident expert developing models for and simulating our carbon capture process, performing experimentation, process design, and techno-economic evaluation to drive the optimization of our chemical processes. We will rely on you to set the standard for analysis techniques and evaluation methodologies within Seabound, solving the toughest technology challenges along the way. Your work will directly prevent greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere and be instrumental in bringing the shipping industry to net zero.

What You’ll Do:

• Identify and evaluate technology improvement and optimisation approaches through literature review, expert interviews, analysis, process modeling and simulation
• Design and perform hands-on experimental campaigns to anchor analysis with real-world data, including test design, integration, operation and evaluation of results
• Perform analytical chemical and thermal fluid calculations to size and design gas-solid reacting systems using a variety of approaches (hand calcs, simple programs, network solvers, CFD models, etc)
• Conduct techno-economic, life cycle assessment and feasibility studies on emerging technologies
• Develop tools to improve the team’s analysis capabilities and streamline workflows
• Collaborate closely with other engineers on the team; contribute to growing and building a strong engineering culture and team
• Anything else that needs to be done in an early-stage startup

Skills and requirements

We are looking for:

• Degree in chemical engineering or related discipline and 1-3 years of relevant industry experience (exact title and compensation will reflect level of experience)

• Strong chemistry and engineering fundamentals in gas-solid reactions, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer

• Practical experience in process modelling and simulation software such as Aspen Plus

• Experience evaluating the techno-economic feasibility of emerging technologies

• Familiarity with Python, MATLAB and/or C++

• Hands-on experimental experience

• Someone who is resourceful, ambitious, excited to tackle hard problems that no one has solved before, and holds themselves and others to a high standard

• Someone who is passionate about decarbonizing the shipping industry and tackling the climate crisis

• Ability to operate effectively under high degrees of uncertainty, ambiguity, and incomplete information and to execute on tasks against tight timelines and aggressive schedules

• (Bonus but not required) experience performing lifecycle analyses (LCAs)

• (Bonus but not required) experience leading the development of a new hardware product/technology

• (Bonus but not required) experience owning significant responsibility in a fast-paced working environment

Seabound is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and strive to create an environment that is inclusive to all employees.