Design Engineer

About the Role

At Evoxia, we are reshaping the environmental footprint and supply chain security of the solar sector. We bypass carbon-heavy legacy smelting to manufacture ultra-high-purity solar silicon using clean hydrogen plasma reduction.

We are looking for a Design Engineer to own the mechanical design of our plasma reduction reactor — from concept through fabricated, commissioned hardware. This is a role for someone who thinks in both CAD and physics: a vessel that holds vacuum while containing a multi-thousand-kelvin plasma in a hydrogen atmosphere is simultaneously a structures problem, a thermal problem and a gas-dynamics problem, and the three do not decouple.

If you have designed plasma etch or deposition chambers, high-temperature process equipment, or vacuum systems, this is the same discipline pointed at a harder product.

What You Will Do

• Reactor Design Ownership: Own the mechanical design of the complete reaction vessel — pressure boundary, internal geometry, lining, product collection and all ports and penetrations — from concept through to released drawings.
• Pressure Boundary Engineering: Size and validate a vessel operating below atmospheric pressure, where the shell is loaded externally and the governing failure mode is collapse rather than yield. Specify shell thickness, stiffening, closures and the roundness tolerances that make the calculation meaningful.
• Internal Flow Path Design: Design the geometry from the plasma source through the reaction volume to the outlet, including cross-section variation along the axis — the feature set that governs residence time, velocity and the thermal profile the reduction chemistry requires.
• Thermal Architecture: Design the internal lining, cooling arrangement and thermal standoff that separate the hot duty from the pressure-bearing duty, with internal temperatures reaching the order of 2,500 °C at the lining. Resolve differential expansion between hot internals and a cooled shell, and keep every seal inside its temperature limit.
• Hydrogen Service Design: Specify materials, joints and sealing for a vessel carrying up to 50% hydrogen by volume at reduced pressure. Design purge provision, leak-tightness standards and the hazardous-area consequences for penetrations and instrumentation.
• Simulation & Validation: Run structural and thermal FEA on your own designs, with the hand calculation that sets the geometry and the simulation that confirms it — and an account of any divergence between them.
• Manufacturing Interface: Produce drawings a fabricator can build from without calling to ask what you meant. Drive vendor selection, quotation, inspection and acceptance with vacuum chamber manufacturers, local fabricators and machine shops.
• Build & Commissioning: Be present during assembly and commissioning. You will see your design meet reality and fix what reality objects to.

What We Are Looking For

• Education: Degree in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related discipline. Advanced degree welcome, not required.
• CAD Fluency: Strong 3D modelling — SolidWorks preferred, CATIA, Creo or NX equally acceptable — and the ability to produce proper manufacturing drawings dimensioned and toleranced to ASME Y14.5 or ISO GPS. Models are not drawings.
• CAE Capability: Structural FEA in Ansys, ABAQUS or equivalent, and thermal or coupled thermo-structural analysis. CFD is a strong plus, particularly compressible or rarefied flow.
• Plasma or Vacuum Equipment Experience: Hands-on design of plasma process chambers (ICP, CCP, etch, PECVD, sputtering), vacuum systems, high-temperature furnaces, or comparable process equipment. Experience with flange standards, elastomer and metal sealing, feedthroughs and leak testing.
• Manufacturability: Demonstrated track record of parts you have specified and had made. We will ask what came back wrong the first time, and what you changed.
• Materials Judgement: Comfort selecting materials for high-temperature, reducing and contamination-sensitive service — refractories, refractory metals, austenitic stainless and the reasoning behind each.
• Hydrogen or Hazardous Gas Awareness: Prior design work under flammable or reducing gas requirements is a significant advantage.

Why Join Evoxia?

• Complete System Ownership: You will own the mechanical architecture of our scaling pilot from first sketch to commissioned hardware. Not a subsystem — the machine.
• Genuinely Unsolved Problem: Hydrogen plasma reduction of silica has never been commercialised anywhere in the world. The chemistry is understood; the reactor is why it hasn't happened. If this works, you will have designed the first machine of its kind.
• Institutional Momentum: Work with an agile team backed by premier deep-tech and clean-tech validation, alongside technical advisors from IIT Delhi, NIT Durgapur and Pondicherry University.
• Hardcore Climate Impact: Your physical engineering outputs directly translate to removing megatons of industrial CO₂ and building clean energy sovereignty.

Shortlisted candidates will be given an unpaid design task and asked to present it at a technical interview.

Compensation is competitive and will be discussed openly in the first conversation rather than at offer stage.

Evoxia is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, religion, caste, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Hiring decisions are made on merit and fit for the role alone.