PHNX Materials | San Leandro, CA, with travel to commercial site in Montana

Note: We can only hire U.S. nationals due to obligations around our funding.

About PHNX Materials

China controls 98% of the world's gallium, 92% of germanium, and 93% of silicon. In 2024, China weaponized export restrictions on gallium and germanium, putting the vulnerability on full display. Each of these metals is a byproduct of heavy industry that no longer exists in the United States. We cannot reshore the supply chain because the underlying industries are gone.

PHNX is the answer to closing that gap, sponsored by the U.S. Department of War and the U.S. Department of Energy. We are a solids refinery turning industrial waste, primarily coal ash and zinc slag, into three product streams: critical metals for semiconductors and defense, cement replacement material for construction, and fertilizer for agriculture.

PHNX was founded by Stanford, Tesla, and national lab alumni, backed by Trust Ventures, Overture, and KdT. We are executing a DoW-sponsored Phase II scale-up program (GALLANT II) for gallium recovery, moving from pilot to commercial scale over the next two and a half years.

The Role

You will own the engineering scale-up of our downstream gas-phase separations train and the upstream high-temperature reactor that feeds it. The separations train is where the product slate is made: a mixed product vapor is split into discrete gallium, germanium, and silicon streams via staged condensation, desublimation, and scrubbing. The reactor runs hot and in corrosive gas service. Both have to scale from our current multi-kilogram pilot to a 100 ton-per-day facility over the next two and a half years.

This role exists because the unit operations we need have not been built at commercial scale in the United States in over thirty years. You will design them from primary pilot data.

The chemistry is metallurgical, but the engineering rides on top of universal physical principles: hot acid-gas service, multi-component condensation, scrubbing, and recycle loop design. We are explicitly open to candidates from refining, petrochemicals, sulfur recovery, and specialty gas processing whose backgrounds map onto these unit operations, alongside candidates from extractive metallurgy.

This is not a QA, QC, validation, or plant-operations role. We are not hiring someone to maintain a process. We are hiring someone to design one that does not yet exist.

This is not a desk role. You will be in the pilot bay running campaigns, in the design tools sizing equipment, on calls with vendors specifying alloys and internals, and on site for commissioning.

What You Will Own

Gas-phase separations train. Design and commission the downstream train that splits a mixed product vapor into discrete gallium, germanium, and silicon streams via staged condensation, desublimation, and scrubbing. Own the thermal profile, vessel internals, materials of construction, sequencing logic, and the close-cut separations that determine final product purity. This is where the product slate is made.

Reactor scale-up. Take our current single-zone pilot reactor to a multi-zone commercial system that feeds the separations train at spec. Own residence time, gas-solid contacting, freeboard, refractory and alloy selection, and heat integration. Specify and procure the long-lead reactor itself.

Hot corrosive gas management. Own the gas stream end to end: reactor offtake, transport lines between unit operations, pressure balance, vent and scrub systems, and the recycle loop that closes the reagent balance at commercial scale. The chemistry generalizes to acid-gas service across industries, including HCl, SO₂, H₂S, and NH₃ environments. This is the most under-engineered system in pyrometallurgical scale-up and the one most likely to determine whether the facility runs.

Mass and energy balances, P&IDs, and equipment specifications across the full refinery. Support AACE Class 3 cost estimation as we move into the commercial design phase.

Bench and pilot experiments to close the engineering uncertainties that block scale-up. Separation efficiency at each stage, fouling and plugging, alloy and refractory compatibility at temperature, dust carryover, salt deposition.

Process safety and commissioning outputs. Author the interlocks, ventilation logic, leak detection, scrubbing systems, SOPs, and commissioning protocols that fall out of pilot campaigns. You will not be inheriting a QA function. You will be authoring one.

Who You Are

• 5+ years of process engineering experience in one or more of the following: gas separations or specialty gas processing; oil and gas refining; petrochemicals; sulfur recovery, amine treating, or other acid-gas processing; pyrometallurgy or extractive metallurgy; or specialty chemicals in corrosive service.

• You have personally taken at least one condenser train, separations system, or reactor from bench or pilot through fabrication and commissioning. You can name the unit, the throughput, and what broke during startup.

• Strong working knowledge of hot corrosive gas service. Examples: HCl, SO₂, H₂S, NH₃, chlorides, or analogous acid-gas environments. You understand dew points, salt deposition, materials of construction, and corrosion mechanisms.

• Materials selection for corrosive service: nickel and high-nickel alloys (Inconel, Hastelloy, Monel), refractory linings, quartz and borosilicate, ceramic-lined transport, and sour-service-grade carbon steels where appropriate.

• Hands-on work on unconventional or solids-bearing feedstocks (coal ash, slag, tailings, ores, heavy residuals, or similar) is a strong plus.

• Direct experience designing, scaling, or operating condensation, desublimation, or distillation trains and high-temperature reactors. Adjacent lineages include titanium, silicon, zirconium, polysilicon (TCS, SiCl₄), VCM/EDC, sulfur recovery, and crude distillation overhead service.

• Strong process modeling. Mass and energy balances, gas-solid kinetics, condensation and desublimation thermodynamics, multi-component VLE. Aspen Plus, HSC, FactSage, or equivalent.

• Hands-on with analytical methods (ICP-OES/MS, XRD, SEM) for tracking recovery, purity, and impurity partitioning across the process.

• Direct communicator. You write clearly, push back when something is wrong, and do not hide behind hedges or buzzwords.

• Excited to be on site at our pilot and at the commercial facility, in person with the team.

Nice to Have

• Working knowledge of the process safety and integrity code stack a scale-up engineer accumulates over a career: OSHA PSM, NFPA 55, EPA RMP, API RP 571 (damage mechanisms), API 521, and NACE/AMPP standards (including MR0175 for sour service) where applicable.

• Familiarity with coal ash, slag, or tailings valorization, or with SCM and ASTM C618.

• SBIR Phase II or other federal contracting exposure.

• Commissioning experience on a greenfield pyrometallurgical, petrochemical, or specialty chemicals facility.

• Refinery crude unit, sulfur recovery, or amine treating experience translated to first-of-kind metallurgical scale-up.

What We Offer

• Ownership of two of the most consequential unit operations in the domestic critical minerals supply chain.

• A fast-paced, mission-driven team where your design decisions get built and run, not filed.

• Competitive cash and meaningful equity.

• A path to a senior technical leadership role as we scale from pilot to commercial production.

PHNX Materials is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.