Metallurgical Process Engineer

About the role

Fabri is an early-stage investment casting startup building a fully integrated digital foundry. Our mission is to deliver precision metal castings with unparalleled speed and cost-effectiveness.

Responsibilities

• Own the solidification behavior of Fabri’s castings — relating thermal history, gradient (G), and growth rate (R) to grain size, grain growth, segregation, and microstructural outcomes, with a focus on repeatability, yield, and defect reduction.
• Predict, measure, and control shrinkage and feeding, including porous (interdendritic) flow through the mushy zone, to eliminate shrinkage porosity, microporosity, and hot tearing.
• Inform the design of new processes and equipment, rebuilding foundry hardware and process steps from first principles to achieve precise thermal and solidification control.
• Design and control solidification to manage grain structure, segregation, phase evolution, shrinkage, hot tearing, porosity, surface condition, and dimensional stability using a combination of SPC, DOE methods, and physics-based reasoning.
• Work closely with the software team to develop in-house thermal and solidification simulations (including gradient/growth-rate and mushy-zone feeding models) to guide alloy selection, gating, risering, mold design, and thermal control decisions.
• Partner with equipment, mechanical design, and automation engineers to define requirements and build custom foundry hardware that enables new casting and solidification approaches.
• Interface directly with customers and internal stakeholders on technically deep discussions around material selection, casting strategy, qualification approach, and production readiness.
• Rapidly transition processes from development into stable production ownership, moving programs forward at a pace consistent with modern aerospace and spaceflight development.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Materials Science, Metallurgical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a closely related field.
• Strong first-principles command of the fundamentals of solidification is required — nucleation and growth, constitutional supercooling, dendritic and columnar-to-equiaxed transition behavior, thermal gradient and growth rate (G/R) relationships, mushy-zone feeding and porous flow, segregation, and shrinkage.
• Strong first-principles grounding in the underlying physics, including heat transfer, fluid flow, thermodynamics, phase transformations, grain structure and grain growth, and surface phenomena.
• 5+ years of experience developing or improving a physically demanding process where solidification, melting, thermal control, or microstructure drives the outcome (e.g., metal casting, additive manufacturing, welding or joining, crystal growth, thermal processing, or a related high-temperature materials process).
• A demonstrated ability to reason from first principles and pick up unfamiliar domains quickly.
• Understanding of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Design of Experiments (DOE) methods for improving and maintaining high-quality processes.
• Demonstrated experience identifying process or material defects, performing root-cause analysis, and driving changes to eliminate them.
• Comfort working hands-on with hardware and equipment, close to the physical process rather than only at a desk.
• Ability to operate effectively in a startup environment with high ownership, ambiguity, and a bias toward execution.
• Ability to rapidly identify, learn, and reason across diverse, multi-disciplinary physics domains and process steps using a systems-engineering mindset, applying strong theoretical fundamentals to solve complex problems efficiently.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with thermal, fluid, or solidification simulation tools (e.g., ProCAST, MAGMASOFT, Flow-3D, or comparable) to model gradient/growth-rate, mushy-zone feeding, and shrinkage.
• Experience with directionally solidified (DS) and/or single-crystal (SCX) solidification.
• Hands-on foundry experience, working directly on the floor operating equipment alongside technicians and engineers (valued, but not required).
• Direct experience with nickel superalloy or other high-temperature investment casting for aerospace or space applications.
• Experience spanning multiple foundry functions, including patterns, shelling, casting, and post-processing.
• Experience designing, building, or commissioning process equipment or custom hardware.
• Experience working in an AS9100-compliant environment.
• Prior work in a startup or rapid-iteration manufacturing environment with high ownership and ambiguity.

What We Offer

• High ownership in solving some of the hardest problems in advanced manufacturing and industrial automation of the US’ most critical supply chains.
• Freedom from legacy foundry constraints – ownership and authority to question entrenched practices, pursue bold ideas, and rapidly innovate without barriers.
• Direct influence over equipment selection, process architecture, and long-term foundry strategy.
• Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the chance to work on hardware that advances humanity’s future.