Equipment Design Engineer

Position Summary

Limelight Steel is seeking an Equipment Design Engineer to own the design of critical hardware at the heart of our Laser Furnace. You’ll apply mechanical design, thermal modeling, and materials engineering to build safe and robust molten metal ladles and high temperature vacuum vessels - ensuring safe, scalable implementation of our technology.

Responsibilities

• Own the design of molten-metal ladles, ensuring mechanical integrity and safety at high temperatures.

• Lead the integration of optics, sensors, vacuum sealing surfaces, and high-temperature mechanical structures into the laser furnace.

• Design and develop a vacuum vessel, ensuring robustness under thermal and pressure gradients as well as mechanical loads.

• Collaborate with pyrometallurgical engineers and subject matter experts to incorporate metals industry best practices into equipment design and implement process improvements.

• Balance speed and rigor in designing, building, and testing new equipment for piloting and scale-up.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or related field

• 5+ years of industry experience

• Hands-on experience designing, building, and troubleshooting prototypes and industrial equipment

• Expertise with thermal modeling tools (e.g., COMSOL) and finite element analysis.

• Experience designing and working with vacuum sealing systems (O-rings, metal seals, feedthroughs).

• Experience designing high-temperature industrial processing equipment (e.g., furnaces, kilns, reactors, or vacuum systems), and knowledge of industrial safety standards.

• Strong fundamentals in heat transfer, stress analysis, and materials selection for high-temperature operation.

• Ability to work across disciplines in a fast-moving, startup environment.

Compensation: Salary range for this role is $160-220k, plus meaningful equity. Final comp will be based on experience and level.