Scientist I/II, Adsorbent Chemistry

Alta Resource Technologies•Boulder, CO

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Alta Resource Technologies is a next-generation mining company using synthetic biology to separate critical minerals from conventional and unconventional resources, including e-waste. Founded in 2023, Alta is expanding its team in Boulder, Colorado. The Scientist I/II will join a small R&D team working on resins and sorbents central to Alta’s separation process. The role establishes in-house resin synthesis and functionalization capabilities, develops analytical methods to characterize resin properties and performance, and improves adsorbent materials to meet process performance, reproducibility, and scale-up requirements. The position is approximately 70% hands-on laboratory work. The role also involves rigorous experimental documentation, authoring SOPs and test methods, analyzing and interpreting data, and communicating results, risks, and recommendations to cross-functional R&D and process engineering teams, executives, and external stakeholders. The position reports to the Principal Scientist / Group Lead — Adsorbent Chemistry and is based in Boulder, Colorado.

Requirements

M.S. or Ph.D. in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, polymer science, or a closely related field.
Scientist I experience level: M.S. plus 3–5 years, or Ph.D. plus 0–2 years.
Scientist II experience level: M.S. plus 5 or more years, or Ph.D. plus 2–5 years.
Hands-on experience making or modifying materials such as polymers, porous solids, inorganic or hybrid materials, surfaces and coatings, catalysts, membranes, or functionalized particles, and relating preparation methods to resulting properties.
Experience characterizing materials using several complementary techniques, such as spectroscopy, thermal analysis, microscopy, surface or porosity analysis, titration, elemental analysis, or chromatography, and recognizing unreliable measurements or results outside a method’s valid range.
Practical wet chemistry skills, including running reactions, handling reagents safely, and quantifying chemical outcomes using assays, titration, gravimetry, or instrumental analysis.
Ability to run structured experimental campaigns by isolating variables, designing around confounds, and drawing defensible conclusions from noisy data.
Rigorous documentation habits, including detailed lab notebook or ELN records and written procedures that others can reproduce.
Comfort working with limited supervision amid shifting priorities in a fast-paced R&D environment.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience making cross-linked porous beads by suspension, emulsion, or dispersion polymerization using a porogen or diluent to drive phase separation, including styrene–divinylbenzene, methacrylate/acrylate systems, polyHIPE, or seeded-swelling (Ugelstad) routes.
Experience immobilizing proteins, peptides, or enzymes on a solid support and measuring loading, retained activity, and leaching.
Experience with post-polymerization modification of porous supports, including chloromethylation, epoxide ring-opening, amination, and activation chemistries such as NHS ester, maleimide, aldehyde, tosyl, or epoxy.
Working command of at least two porosity or particle characterization techniques, such as N₂/Ar physisorption (BET, BJH, or DFT pore size distributions), mercury intrusion porosimetry, inverse size-exclusion chromatography, SEM, or laser diffraction particle sizing.
Packed-bed column evaluation experience, including breakthrough curves, dynamic binding capacity, pressure drop, and multi-cycle load/elute/regenerate studies.
Experience evaluating materials lifetime and degradation through chemical and mechanical stability testing under aggressive process conditions over repeated use cycles.
Experience with design of experiments and statistical analysis.
Prior experience at a resin, chromatography media, or sorbent manufacturer.

Responsibilities

Develop and implement in-house methods for porous resin synthesis, surface functionalization, and ligand attachment to produce adsorbents with defined chemical and physical properties.
Develop and qualify analytical methods for resin composition, functional group density, ligand loading, porosity, and particle properties, while assessing the limitations and reliability of each method.
Relate material properties to protein immobilization, adsorption capacity, selectivity, stability, and separation performance in collaboration with protein chemistry and process engineering teams.
Establish reproducible bench-scale synthesis and functionalization workflows, optimize reaction conditions, and identify critical process parameters that govern resin quality.
Translate workflows into process specifications for larger-scale production and support integration into Alta’s adsorbent manufacturing workflows.
Maintain rigorous experimental records, author SOPs and test methods, and analyze and interpret data.
Communicate results, risks, and recommendations clearly to cross-functional R&D and process engineering teams, executives, and external stakeholders.
Plan, document, and execute detailed experiments related to sorbent synthesis and characterization, including troubleshooting and identifying next steps.