Senior Mechanical Engineer; Pyrolysis

About Charm

Our mission is to return the atmosphere to 280 ppm CO₂. We convert excess inedible biomass into carbon-rich bio‑oil and inject it into underground storage for permanent carbon removal. At scale, we can use bio‑oil to make fossil‑free iron.

Our carbon removal efforts began in 2020 with initial purchases from customers like Stripe, Shopify, and Microsoft. Since then, we’ve scaled to thousands of tons of carbon removal, grown to over a hundred employees, and established three locations in San Francisco, Colorado, and Louisiana.

We're expanding our team of ambitious, creative, and hands‑on problem solvers. We value psychological safety, collaboration, and continuous learning. We take calculated risks and treat mistakes as opportunities to improve. If you're excited about tackling big challenges, we encourage you to explore our company values.

Come help us reverse climate change. Gigatons or bust!

As a Senior Mechanical Engineer based out of our Fort Lupton facility, you’ll be responsible for designing the next generation of pyrolysis technology, implementing and troubleshooting mechanical systems in production, and collaborating with the broader engineering team, including electrical, automation, and manufacturing engineers, as well as fabricators and technicians. This group collaborates to overcome design/build/test challenges and successfully execute commissioning and production handover campaigns.

This role involves designing new mechanical systems, selecting electromechanical actuators, sensors, pumps, etc. and continually improving on our pyrolysis and biomass processing equipment. You’ll turn wrenches to help bring your designs to life and develop test plans to ensure your systems meet overall design intent. Often, you will be tasked with updating the configuration of legacy systems in order to validate novel design pathways or new subsystems, informing the architecture of our next generation of pyrolysis equipment.

In order to meet Charm’s overall production and throughput goals, the role will leverage mechanical and system expertise to provide troubleshooting support for production machines based on issues observed by our Operations partners. This role will report to the Lead Pyrolysis Engineer based out of Fort Lupton, Colorado.

Someone successful in this role will enjoy bringing new designs to life and helping to test and commission their new equipment. This person takes pride in delivering robust mechanical solutions that work in the real world, and loves stepping through the root cause analysis process when systems are not performing as intended. This person also takes an analytical approach to problem solving and is not afraid to step out of their comfort zone when tackling new problems.

A great attitude in the face of difficult and fast‑paced environments is a must! We have ambitious goals, help us make them possible!

• Design unique solutions for our next generation operations pyrolyzer:
  Develop mechanical and electromechanical systems for production use while considering interfacing systems, operating requirements, operator burden, and regular service and maintenance. Consider what technology needs thorough R&D to simplify and redefine our machine architecture. Learn from previous successes and failures to develop and integrate novel vessels and process steps that tie back to real business needs. Work with our testing team to validate performance before operations integration.
• Conduct thorough engineering analysis:
  Work with process engineers to develop thermal and flow models to inform system design. Process piping and vessels are important components in our greater pyrolysis system, refine their mechanisms to deliver an industrial solution.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues:
  Identify and troubleshoot mechanical system malfunctions and performance gaps. Determine why a failure mode is observed and implement a corrective action to return the system to optimal performance.
• Develop and execute test plans and commissioning campaigns for production hardware:
  Take direct ownership of your designs beyond pressing print on your drawings. Validate…