Research Associate, Materials Development

Aether Biomachines•Menlo Park, CA

About The Position

Aether is looking for a hands-on Research Associate to join our Materials Development team. You will play a central role in how our materials are printed, tested, and understood - operating our fleet of 3D printers, running mechanical and thermal characterization, and generating high-quality data that drives product development and customer success. This is a junior, execution-focused role with significant room for growth. You’ll start as a generalist across printing and testing workflows, and over time develop a deep intuition for 3D printing behavior and materials performance. As our R&D capabilities expand beyond FFF and FDM, you will have opportunities to help build novel testing workflows and support application development.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Polymer Engineering, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, or a related field.
0-2 (up to ~4) years of hands-on experience with 3D printing, mechanical testing, or lab-based materials work.
Strong mechanical aptitude and comfort with tools, equipment, and iterative troubleshooting.
Highly organized, reliable, and motivated by executing workflows with precision.
Curious, collaborative, and eager to grow from a generalist into a specialist.

Nice To Haves

Experience with filament extrusion or polymer processing beyond 3D printing.
Experience optimizing print files, slicing parameters, or printer profiles.
Comfort with CAD software (not required).
Experience with rheological or thermal characterization techniques.

Responsibilities

Operate, maintain, and troubleshoot our fleet of prosumer and professional 3D printers (currently includes Bambu Labs, Prusa, Intamsys, Ultimaker, and more)
Execute printing workflows for internal formulations, including part setup, print file preparation, and post-processing.
Help develop and refine print profiles, slicing strategies, and optimization methods.
Over time, become an expert-level user of our equipment and take ownership of printer performance and reliability.
Perform mechanical testing (tensile, impact, flexural) and thermal characterization (glass transition, HDT, CTE).
Support expanded testing capabilities including creep, static load, sub-ambient testing, and rheology.
Desire to assist in method development and refinement to improve how we measure and better explain in-field material behavior.
Record and organize experimental results with high attention to detail.
Generate basic data interpretations; familiarity with JMP or interest in learning it is a plus.
Work with the team as we integrate testing workflows into Uncountable for automated data capture.
Become the day-to-day owner for key instruments, including routine maintenance.
Help ensure equipment uptime and calibration reliability as our lab grows.
Contribute to development of new testing and printing methods as R&D capabilities expand.
Gain exposure to extrusion processing.
Opportunity to support application development as the team scales.