Materials and Process Engineer

Karman Industries

Karman Industries is a Torrance-based thermal technology company building the backbone for giga-scale AI infrastructure. Founded by a team from SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and GE, Karman is moving beyond legacy cooling with the launch of the HPU (Heat Processing Unit)—a new category of thermal architecture designed for the 100kW+ rack era.

The HPU shrinks the exterior mechanical yard by up to 80% while reducing peak energy consumption by 10%+. Unlike traditional systems, the Karman HPU provides zero-water (WUE 0) cooling that ensures high-TDP GPUs and HBM4 memory stay at optimal thermal setpoints without throttling.

Founded in 2024, we’re a fast-growing team of passionate professionals dedicated to making a tangible impact on the future of humanity. We design, build, and test real hardware, and we lead with ownership: you’ll own your work from concept to hardware and help shape how we scale. Our values are Ownership, Performance Excellence, Radical Transparency, and Customer-Centricity.

Join us in our mission to transform the industry and contribute to a more sustainable world.

Summary

Karman Industries is looking for a motivated Materials and Process Engineer to help design the next generation of heat processing systems. You will lead material selection, testing, and qualification across electrical, magnetic, thermal, and structural materials, with particular depth in the polymers, adhesives, and insulation systems that determine the life of high-voltage, high-power-density hardware. A central focus is qualifying materials and processes for electric motors operating in supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂), where high pressure, elevated temperature, and CO₂ absorption affects the performance of polymers, insulation, magnets, and joints.

Key Responsibilities

• Material selection and trade studies for motors, inverters, SSTs and thermal systems, balancing dielectric, thermal, mechanical, magnetic, and manufacturability requirements

• Qualification of insulation systems, adhesives, potting and encapsulation compounds, coatings, thermal interface materials, laminations and permanent magnets

• Apply polymer and adhesive chemistry (cure kinetics, glass transition, crosslink density, filler systems, moisture/gas uptake, outgassing and aging mechanisms) to select materials and predict long-term behavior

• Design and run exposure and aging programs in supercritical CO₂ (swelling, permeation, plasticization, additive extraction, rapid gas decompression, corrosion and dielectric change) and translate results into material and design decisions for motor insulation, potting, adhesives, seals, magnets and joints

• Develop analytical, physics-based (first principles) models to determine material performance and limitations

• Analyze and implement compliance requirements for certification and applicable industry codes and standards

• Failure analysis and root-cause investigations, driving corrective action and design feedback through to closure

• Author material and process specifications, qualification procedures and internal standards, and maintain controlled material databases and approved-materials lists

• Partner with electrical, mechanical, thermal and manufacturing engineering, and with suppliers, to translate design requirements into qualified materials and robust production processes

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in materials qualification, materials engineering or process development

• Demonstrated depth in thermosetting and thermoplastic polymers (adhesives, elastomers, resins, enamels) with a working understanding of polymer chemistry

• Direct experience with electric motors, generators, transformers, inverters or other high-voltage or power electronics hardware, including insulation systems and thermal management

• Hands-on experience designing test programs, running them, and turning data into qualification decisions

• Experience qualifying materials for high-pressure gas, aggressive-fluid or similarly demanding service environments, with an understanding of how fluid absorption affects polymers

• Strong failure analysis and root-cause skills, with a record of resolving complex field or qualification failures

• Ability to work independently, influence across disciplines and communicate clearly with engineers, leadership and suppliers

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with magnetic materials, potting compounds, VPI resins, encapsulation, thermal interface materials, and bonded or structural joints

• Understanding of electric motor design and of dielectric behavior under high voltage, high frequency and fast-switching (wide-bandgap) stress, including partial discharge

• Familiarity with relevant standards: ASTM, IEC, IEEE, UL, AWS and ASME, including insulation system qualification (e.g., IEC 60085, IEEE 1776, IEEE 117, IEC 60664)

• Analytical and characterization methods: DMA, DSC, TGA, FTIR, SEM, C-SAM, Radiography, micro-CT, Partial discharge, and optical/digital microscopy

• Experience with supercritical or high-pressure CO₂, or related fields such as oil and gas, subsea, CO₂ compressors or refrigeration, or supercritical processing

• Reliability engineering experience, including accelerated life testing, Weibull analysis and design for reliability

Karman Industries is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Karman Industries is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Direct applicants only — we are not working with outside recruiters or agencies for this role.