Senior Electrochemical Stack Engineer

We’re a London-based climate tech startup working to reinvent carbon for a thriving planet. Since 2020, we have rapidly pioneered the world’s most versatile direct air capture (DAC) technology to recover historic CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere, anywhere at any scale. Backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the XPRIZE foundation, Stripe, and the UK Government, we’ve moved a brand new climate technology from lab to commercial plants in under three years to rapidly empower carbon removal and sustainable utilisation.

Join MZT at a pivotal moment as we transition from an early-stage R&D startup to a revenue-generating company ready to scale our direct-air capture technology globally.

We're looking for an Electrochemical Stack Engineer to develop our next generation of stack designs. Electrodialytic approaches to DAC lean on established electrodialysis designs, however these designs are far from optimal for the specificity of electrochemical direct-air capture. As our Electrochemical Stack Engineer you'll lead stack development 'll define the opportunity areas for our next-generation stack, develop concepts that attack the biggest resistance losses in the cell, while ensuring stability and robustness, and lead the build–test–evaluate cycles that prove (or kill) them.

For winning concepts, you'll scale them into full-size stacks, navigating supply chain and manufacturing constraints along the way.

The role has two sides. You'll lead on the stacks we procure, assessing what the supply chain offers, judging their suitability for our process and specifying modifications where needed. In parallel, you'll lead the development of DAC-optimised electrodialytic stacks designed around our process conditions from the start. On both fronts you'll work closely with our process, mechanical and electrical engineers so that the stack meets the requirements of our DAC technology and the wider plant design.

Reporting to the R&D leadership team, you'll work alongside key members of the R&D lab, and mentor junior scientists and engineers as the team grows.

• Defining the opportunity areas for MZT's next-generation electrochemical stack: quantifying where the losses sit and which are worth attacking first
• Developing concepts for performance improvement across cell geometry, materials and flow design, backed by models and analysis that clarify your predictions
• Leading build–test–evaluate cycles with the R&D team: designing testing campaigns, characterising stack performance and tracing observed phenomena back to underlying mechanisms and design features
• Scaling successful concepts into full-scale stacks, working through fabrication, assembly and design-for-manufacture constraints
• Leading stack procurement: assessing commercially available stacks, specifying modifications and managing technical relationships with vendors and manufacturers
• Articulating stack requirements to process, mechanical, electrical and safety engineers so the stack and the wider plant design converge
• Closing the feedback loop: internalising learnings from every campaign and applying them to subsequent stack designs
• Mentoring, guiding and supporting junior staff, helping them acquire new skills, knowledge and capabilities

• A deep grounding in the theory and mathematical principles that describe electrochemical processes. You understand electrochemistry from first principles, not just by analogy or heuristics
• Experience designing electrochemical stacks at multiple scales involving aqueous electrolytes, ion-exchange membranes and gas generation
• A strong grasp of how the culmination of geometric features, material selection and process parameters determines the critical performance parameters of a stack
• A track record of taking designs through to fabricated, assembled hardware in collaboration with mechanical, electrical and process engineers
• Significant experience designing and executing testing campaigns, with the diagnostic instinct to trace behaviour back to root mechanisms
• The habit of reducing problems to first principles and building models to sharpen your thinking, paired with…