Laser-Processing Scientist

Nearly every material humanity uses at scale is cast from a liquid or cut from a solid. But the highest-performing materials — carbides, borides, diamond — don’t melt and can’t be cut, which leaves the most ambitious designs stuck in CAD. Light Materials is scaling up a process that grows finished, complex parts of these extreme materials, in shapes and compositions nobody else can produce — for vehicles that fly faster, engines that burn hotter, and chips that run cooler.

We are looking for an outstanding experimentalist to own the science of our roboticized, laser-controlled, materials processing technology and help us scale it up. The process is new enough that basic questions are still open, and the answers translate directly into hardware — a rare regime where a good experiment can change what the machine does next month. The role is hands-on, multidisciplinary, and deeply technical, and it sits squarely on the company’s critical path: you’ll be responsible for building the physical insight that unlocks higher manufacturing through puts, new applications, and complex geometries.

• Operate our existing process, which uses laser optics and high-precision robotics to grow materials directly — and internalize its limits and opportunities
• Build a suite of diagnostics (optics, online sensors, etc.) and run experiments to extend the process to higher through puts, larger parts, new geometries, and different materials
• Reconfigure software and hardware as needed to make prototype parts for early customers
• Identify architectural tradeoffs and communicate them to the team
• Set technical direction for subsequent generations of our machinery, iterating with our engineers to implement your concepts

• Ph.D. in physics, materials science, or engineering — or equivalent experience and interest
• Strong hands-on experimental skills: you design, build, and run your own experiments
• Excellent technical fundamentals
• Experience with laboratory optics
• Proficiency with common programming languages
• A track record of taking on hard technical problems and delivering solutions
• A fast pace and a desire to build something completely new

• CAD tools and 3D printing
• CVD, PVD, epitaxy
• GCMS

All employees work in person at our R&D lab in Sunnyvale, CA. Competitive salary, meaningful equity, and full benefits.