Test Engineer, Direct Air Capture Systems
Climate-technology company building direct air capture machines and supplying captured CO2 to commercial and industrial customers, Bay Area
| Employer | Climate-technology company building direct air capture machines and supplying captured CO2 to commercial and industrial customers, Bay Area (not named) |
|---|---|
| Location | Berkeley, CA (Bay Area) · On-site |
| Type & level | Full-time · Mid-level |
| Pay | USD 130k–170k per year Source: pay range stated in the source posting |
| Visa path | O-1A fit |
| Role family | Carbon Capture / Direct Air Capture Engineer |
About the role
The company is moving its direct air capture machines from prototypes toward production by repeatedly designing, building and testing them. This engineer owns testing at every level, from individual component life tests to full-system performance. The results feed directly back to design teams and shape how the equipment is operated and maintained.
What you'll do
- Run system-level tests on direct air capture units, covering design-envelope limits, performance characterization and operational optimization.
- Help define the efficiency and performance metrics that connect company-level goals to design-team deliverables.
- Plan and carry out accelerated life and highly accelerated life test programs, including test objectives, fixtures, instrumentation, execution and analysis.
- Characterize how equipment performance degrades over time to check design-life assumptions and inform predictive maintenance and O&M schedules.
- Turn test findings into clear, actionable feedback for design and operations teams.
- Work with colleagues across the organization to build the data pipeline from telemetry into dashboards and reports used for engineering decisions.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical, aerospace, chemical, controls or electrical engineering, physics, or a closely related field.
- 4–8 years of professional experience in test engineering, systems testing or experimental R&D on hardware systems.
- Strong instrumentation and data acquisition background, including sensors, signal conditioning, DAQ, SCADA and historian platforms.
- Hands-on experience with the full test cycle, from objectives and fixture design through data logging, analysis and design feedback.
- Solid physics-based understanding of thermal, fluid or electrochemical systems, and skill in defining meaningful performance metrics.
- Working knowledge of Python, JMP, SQL, Excel or similar tools for data analysis; able to climb, crouch and lift 25 pounds or more.
Nice to have
- Master's degree.
- Leadership experience on small teams or project management experience.
- Prior experience with direct air capture, carbon capture, industrial process equipment or other energy hardware.
- Experience scaling a test or quality function from early stage to commercial production.
- Background in reliability engineering, predictive maintenance or asset performance management.
Pay & benefits
USD 130k–170k per year. The posting does not list benefits.
Pay source: pay range stated in the source posting. Market data, not an offer from O1DMatch.
Visa path
People in climate-hardware testing roles often support an O-1A case with evidence such as published or patented technical work, judging or peer-review activity, documented original contributions to reliability or test methods, and a high salary relative to the field. The posting states no citizenship restriction. An employer like this one, or a U.S. agent, can file the petition, though approval depends on the individual's evidence and is never assured.
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