Chief Technology Officer

Overview

Invent Wood’s Chief Technology Officer will own the manufacturing technology strategy from SUPERMILL TWO onward. This role sits at the intersection of deep process engineering, capital‑intensive industrial scale‑up, and platform design. The objective is to architect a replicable, modular manufacturing system that improves in cost, speed and performance with each iteration.

• Define and own the multi‑year technology roadmap carrying SUPERMILL TWO through the next generations of facilities, with explicit targets for unit cost, throughput, capital intensity and build time.
• Translate the ambition of world‑transforming scale into a concrete sequence of technology bets—process intensification, equipment standardization, automation, digitalization, feedstock strategy— with clear milestones and capital requirements.
• Design SUPERMILLS as a platform, not bespoke plants: standardised unit operations, modular production cells, and reusable mechanical, electrical and digital designs that compress time and capital for every subsequent build.
• Lead the internal engineering discipline and collaborate with external EPC partners, equipment vendors and fabricators to deliver replicable facility designs.
• Own the pipeline that carries innovation from R&D bench to production lines—new formulations, process windows, product families, performance improvements— with process‑engineering rigor that preserves scientific intent.
• Drive down unit cost of production through process optimisation, yield, automation, equipment standardisation and chemistry/feedstock improvements.
• Build manufacturing flexibility so mills can produce for the highest‑value application at any given time and evolve product lines without rebuilding the plant.
• Design SUPERMILLS from day one as data‑native operations, with instrumented equipment, clean data pipelines and digital twins for simulation, optimisation and remote oversight.
• Deploy AI where it impacts: parametric plant design, process control, defect detection, predictive maintenance, material‑property prediction, experimental design and fleet‑wide learning.
• Partner with the CSO to establish a rigorous Design of Experiments framework and high‑throughput experimentation capability that generates world‑class manufacturing data.
• Set and enforce engineering standards—process, equipment, controls, software—required for a fleet‑scale company.
• Build and lead the technical organisation across process engineering, equipment engineering, automation and controls, digital and data and pilot operations.
• Partner with operations, commercial, R&D and finance leadership to make decisions at the speed required by the opportunity.

• Have scaled a physical, capital‑intensive manufacturing technology from first commercial plant to multi‑plant operation—advanced materials, chemicals, batteries, semiconductors or an adjacent industry.
• Designed and built manufacturing equipment and facilities, not just specified them.
• Have hands‑on experience—welding, machining, assembling, prototyping hardware—and bring that fluency into design reviews and vendor conversations.
• Have led the translation of R&D into production at real scale and can point to the products and plants that did not exist without your leadership.
• Think in systems and platforms, rooted in first principles, with an instinct for when to standardise, customise and encode learning into design.
• Have addressed cost and reliability, demonstrated high‑calibre technical organisational leadership and engineering excellence that motivates teams.
• Fluent in modern manufacturing digitalisation—MES, SCADA, data infrastructure, digital twins, ML‑driven process control—and know what these technologies can actually deliver.
• Partner effectively with CEOs, boards, investors and customers, and can represent the technical realities of a company that is simultaneously industrial, technological and mission‑driven.
• Advanced degree in engineering, materials science, chemical engineering or a related discipline. PhD welcome but not required.
• 15+ years of progressively senior technology and manufacturing leadership, including ownership of at least one large industrial scale‑up.
• Experience leading technology strategy at the executive level, not just running operations.

SUPERMILL TWO runs at or above its design nameplate with well‑understood, defensible economics. SUPERMILL THREE—and the modular platform behind it—will be designed, financed and under construction, with a materially lower per‑ton capital cost and a credible path to further reductions. A product roadmap expands SUPERWOOD into multiple large end markets with defined manufacturing paths. Invent Wood’s manufacturing technology organisation is recognised as one of the best industrial scale‑up teams in the world.