Marine Coatings Engineering Lead

N4 Solutions, LLC offers our public and private sector clients the collective intellectual knowledge, expertise, and experience of our company and associates to help our customers evaluate, collaborate, innovate, and create business, technology, and scientific solutions that enable them to accomplish their mission and achieve organizational objectives. With the growth of the company, we are seeking a highly motivated and hard-working corrosion engineering professional to join our team.

The successful candidate will work in a high-paced and rewarding work environment.

The Marine Coatings Engineering Lead will serve as a senior Research and Development (R&D) technical leader supporting NRL, with a primary focus on marine coatings engineering and surface-treatment technologies for Navy platforms. The position will lead, coordinate, and conduct the development, refinement, testing, and transition of marine coatings and surface treatments, including coating formulation, thermal spray technologies, and improved autonomy for applying and removing hull treatments.

The successful candidate will lead complex R&D activities from experimental planning and coating development through laboratory and field evaluation, data analysis, technical reporting, and fleet-relevant technology transition while ensuring technical quality and alignment with Navy mission and sponsored-program objectives.

• Provide senior R&D technical leadership for marine coatings science and technology programs supporting Navy ships, submarines, marine structures, aircraft, and other war fighting platforms.
• Lead the development, refinement, formulation, and testing of marine coating systems and surface treatments for Navy and military applications.
• Plan, oversee, and conduct formulation and synthesis of resins, pigments, and coating systems for underwater hulls, topside surfaces, non-skid areas, bilges, rudders, tanks, voids, and other Navy applications.
• Develop and evaluate multifunctional coatings, including surface-tolerant, anti-fouling, rapid-cure, solvent-free, self-inspecting, high-performance/durability, and low-solar-absorbance coating technologies.
• Direct the development and testing of surface treatments, including thermal spray and other surface-modification or enhancement approaches, to improve corrosion resistance, durability, maintainability, and service life.
• Design and oversee laboratory and field test programs to assess physical properties and coating performance under natural seawater exposure, atmospheric conditions, environmental test chambers, simulated flow environments, and other Navy-relevant conditions.
• Evaluate coating and surface-treatment performance under environmental extremes of temperature, humidity, and solar exposure and under Navy-specific performance conditions such as acoustic damping, coefficient of friction, wear, durability, and exposure.
• Ensure coatings and treated components are designed and tested for conformance with applicable Navy, DoD, and other technical standards, specifications, procedures, and acceptance criteria.
• Develop, evaluate, and improve techniques, equipment, and processes for surface preparation, coating application, coating inspection, coating removal, and related ship-maintenance activities.
• Lead R&D efforts to improve autonomy and automation in the application and removal of hull treatments, including evaluation of equipment, process controls, sensing, inspection, and repeatability of automated or semi-automated approaches.
• Develop and review scientific and engineering test plans, experimental designs, data requirements, quality controls, and acceptance criteria for marine coatings and surface-treatment evaluations.
• Oversee and participate in test execution, data collection, data management, analysis, interpretation, and reporting to establish defensible conclusions and Objective Quality Evidence (OQE) for coating and surface-treatment performance.
• Support field demonstrations, waterfront testing, shipboard evaluations, and technology-transition activities for marine coatings, surface treatments, application/removal technologies, and related corrosion-control solutions.
• Plan and support technology demonstrations of marine coatings and related systems at Navy, shipyard, waterfront, laboratory, and other field locations, including coordination of experimental platforms, test beds, equipment, and logistics as required.
• Use analytical, statistical, modeling, and data-visualization tools to…