Materials Engineer

Atum Works•Mountain View, CA

About The Position

Atum Works is building what it describes as the world’s first scalable 3D lithography foundry, with the goal of changing how advanced computing systems are built and the material basis of the world. The Materials Engineer will work directly with the founders and engineering team to develop and evaluate materials and engineering processes for the company’s technology. This highly hands-on, mission-critical role defines how materials behave, fail, and scale in the system, navigating a broad design space and rapidly determining which materials and processes work. The work directly affects conductivity, strength, reliability, and lifetime, with a focus on increasing the rate of learning and converging on scalable solutions. As the company enters its next phase, the Materials Engineer will help transition processes from early R&D into manufacturing. The role is flexibly scoped and may be leveled from senior individual contributor to Director or VP depending on experience and scope. At every level, it remains hands-on and focused on building, experimenting, and driving materials decisions directly.

Requirements

Strong background in thin film mechanics, metallurgy, materials science, chemistry, or related fields.
Deep experience with metals, alloys, and microstructure, including grain boundaries, diffusion, and intermetallic behavior.
Strong intuition and ability to reason from first principles before relying on simulation or experimentation.
Ability to build predictive, first-principles models for physical systems.
Experience developing and optimizing advanced materials processing methods.
Ability to design and execute experiments, including successful design of experiments (DOE) execution under resource limitations.
Comfort working across modeling, experimentation, and process development.
Deep understanding of characterization working principles and limitations.
High ownership and ability to operate independently.

Nice To Haves

Experience setting up large-scale automation from scratch and increasing learning rate and speed (for example, 10x faster) with documented metrics.
Strong foundations in probability and statistics, including understanding the underlying assumptions of applicable models.
Experience with reliability, lifetime engineering, and verification.
Experience in semiconductors, packaging, MEMS, or advanced manufacturing.
Experience working on interconnects, substrates, or similar systems.
Experience transitioning processes from R&D to manufacturing.
Familiarity with multiphysics modeling or simulation approaches.
Experience working across industry and academia.
A track record of IP papers, patents, publications, or impactful technical contributions.

Responsibilities

Develop and evaluate materials and engineering processes for Atum Works’ technology.
Determine how materials behave, fail, and scale in the system.
Navigate a broad design space of materials and processes and rapidly identify effective solutions.
Drive materials decisions that affect conductivity, strength, reliability, and lifetime.
Increase the rate of learning and converge on scalable solutions.
Help transition processes from early R&D into manufacturing.
Build, experiment, and work directly on materials decisions.