Product Development Lead

1 | About NeoCarbon

NeoCarbon is building a next-generation cooling and direct air carbon capture system for data centers. With proof-of-concept partnerships in place and public grants secured, we are now transitioning from R&D into pilots and early commercial scale across Europe.

2 | The Role

NeoCarbon's core technology, at the heart of our cooling and direct air carbon capture systems for data centers, sits at the intersection of material science and process engineering. The real challenge is getting the sorbent's material properties to work in harmony with the system around it: vacuum level, cycle timing, heat and water demand. Today, that technology exists as a handful of hand-built fibers and frames, developed together with external partners. You're joining to help finalize that product development and turn it into hundreds of frames, researching these key engineering variables and scaling the technology reliably and sustainably while evaluating its commercial viability. This is a scale-up and commercialization role at its heart: taking a promising lab-scale technology and engineering it for manufacturability, reliability, and market readiness.

You'll own that maturation from pilot-validated to industrializable: translating system-level requirements into concrete specifications, directing our external development partners, and building the roadmap and team that gets us from a handful of frames to hundreds. In the early phase, that also means working through the remaining open questions alongside our simulation and materials teams, before the focus shifts fully to scale-up.

3 | Your responsibilities

Own NeoCarbon's relationships with external development partners for fiber potting, frame construction, and lumen-coating process scale-up, from technical specification through delivery.

Translate system-level requirements (cycle time, vacuum level, heat/water demand) from our simulation team into concrete, buildable specifications for partners and internal teams.

Run or guide targeted experiments on fiber, coating, and frame designs to close remaining open technical questions, particularly in the earlier phase before the design is fully locked.

Define and drive the roadmap that carries our hollow-fiber frames through successive validation stages, including our upcoming outdoor pilot, toward a design that's manufacturable at scale.

Bring design-for-manufacture and cost discipline to every material, process, and partner decision, including build-vs-partner calls such as whether to use a commercially available potting solution or develop a custom one.

Keep the technology roadmap aligned with our emerging commercial use cases, particularly capturing CO₂ using industrial waste heat, where reliability, capex, and integration matter as much as raw efficiency.

Lead and grow a small technical team, and act as a hands-on technical bridge across materials science, process simulation, and mechanical/chemical engineering.

4 | Team

You'll build and grow your own team over time, from internal and new team members. Depending on fit, this role may also directly lead engineers currently focused on fiber potting and frame development. You'll collaborate closely, as a peer, with our simulation expert, who owns system-level modeling and requirements, and stay connected to a broader technical team spanning chemistry, materials characterization, and lab/test infrastructure.

5 | Your background

• Intrinsic motivation to work on a challenging topic but with real-world positive impact.
• Minimum 10 years of relevant work experience.
• An engineering background (chemical, mechanical, industrial, or process) with hands-on exposure to membranes, sorption systems, gas separation, or comparable unit operations, along with working exposure to material science and the economics of scaling new technology (e.g., techno-economic analysis). Comfort working through open technical questions is important, especially early on; a research background is a plus but not a requirement, what matters more is the judgment to move decisions forward under uncertainty.
• A track record of taking a hardware or process technology from early pilot scale through product development to pre-commercial or commercial launch, including the judgment to know whether scalability, technical viability, or economics should be prioritized at a given stage, and the ability to build and manage realistic timelines and know where they can safely be accelerated without compromising delivery. Direct experience managing external development or manufacturing partners is a plus.
• English C1/C2 & working fluency in cost- and manufacturability-driven engineering decisions.
• People leadership experience, even at modest scale.
• A track record that includes navigating a program through a real setback, not only successes. We want someone whose experience gives the team confidence when hardware development gets hard.

6 | Nice to Have

Experience in direct air capture, carbon capture, or adjacent climate hardware (electrolyzers, battery manufacturing scale-up, industrial gas separation).

Direct experience with hollow-fiber membrane systems.

7 | Our Offer

The chance to actively shape a high-impact, early-stage company

Competitive compensation program incl. VSOPs

A large, beautiful office in Berlin on the Marienpark campus, alongside other tech startups

Direct collaboration with the leadership team, open communication, high trust, and genuine ownership from day one

Benefits: free Nextbike access, highly subsidized Urban Sports Club membership and Deutschlandticket, plus fruits, breakfast, snacks and pasta lunches

Apply Now!

? Looking forward to your application. We will get back to you within 5 business days.