Chemical Reaction Engineer

Who we are:

DUDE CHEM is a Green Chemistry startup with its origins in the German Cluster of Excellence in Catalysis at the University of Technology Berlin. We are a small but mighty team which is dedicated to fulfil our mission: Based on the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry we aim to build a green chemical-pharmaceutical industry. The industry currently consumes >13% of all fossil resources, most of them during the manufacturing. Our aim is to change this.

In order to achieve this goal, we have built a strong IP portfolio and validated the tech onto the market in order to reduce or reuse expensive resources in the production of chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

We believe that digitalization can be an integral tool for the implementation of greener, more sustainable production processes.

This is why we combine both scientific disciplines – digitalization and sustainability – in all of our projects. Over the last years, our team has proven that our approaches work and created hard competitive advantages in the core of the value chain of their customers.

Why we need you:

We are expanding our development team in order bring our first, greener manufactured products into the plants. Further, many customers are approaching us in order to get our support and help them to produce in a more sustainable and controlled way. Thus, we need your help to bring our greener processes into manufacturing as part of our Chemistry & Engineering Team.

In this role you will support our development team with your chemical and reaction engineering know-how as well as your modelling & optimization expertise. You will be responsible for developing and implementing complex mechanistic reaction models for our greener processes and use these models to up-scale the processes and run them in the optimal way.

If you want to bring innovative green chemical manufacturing processes
from the lab scale into the plant scale and have a real positive impact on
the world, you are the perfect match for us!

Tasks

Tasks you will be working on:

As a Reaction Engineer, we expect you to accompany our manufacturing processes all the way from early development to their implementation in the manufacturing plant. Right from the start, we expect you to scale up the reaction of one of our developed processes using dynamic, kinetic models, optimizing it and transferring it into the manufacturing plant.

• Further develop the reactions of our greener processes in collaboration with our chemists.
• Work together with our chemists to determine the detailed reaction networks, and pathways of the reactions.
• Build up and dimensionally scale down the experimental equipment needed for conducting of the kinetic studies.
• Design, plan, set up, execute and evaluate experimental kinetic studies of different reactions in order to provide safe, efficient, robust and scalable processes.
• Determine the reaction kinetics and use them to model the chemical reaction and reactor.
• Predict and determine experimentally needed physical and chemical properties.
• Coordinate the experimental work with our chemists and lab technicians.
• Perform parameter estimation based on experimental data and validate the developed models.
• Use the developed models for the scale up of the processes from lab scale to plant scale.
• Define optimization problems, implement them and use the developed models to find the optimal operating conditions for the plant scale.

Requirements

Skills and attitudes that might be helpful:

• Degree (M.Sc., Dipl.-Ing or PhD) in chemical engineering, or a related engineering discipline.
• Knowledge in reaction engineering, especially reaction kinetics, reactor design, multi-phase reaction systems and thermodynamics.
• Experience in working in interdisciplinary teams, leading discussions with chemists and pushing for the joint solution on complex problems.
• Experience in planning, execution and evaluation of reaction kinetic experiments in the lab or kilo lab.
• Experience in scaling up reactions from the lab to the plant scale using state of the art modeling approaches.
• Experience in computational solving of complex Differential-Algebraic-Equation (DAE) Systems using sophisticated model parameter estimation approaches.
• Experience in Python or a similar programming language like MATLAB.
• Experience using modeling and simulation tools such as AspenPlus, gProms, DynoChem, or IDAES.
• Experience with optimization tools such as Pyomo, GAMS or AMPL.
• Good organizational and project as well as time management skills.
• Highly self-driven, professional personality with an aspiration to excel in the role.
• Excellent written and oral communication, as well as presentation skills. Being fluent in English is a must, in German a plus.

Benefits

What we offer:

We regard your skills as well as your conscience as our highest assets. We provide every team member with a veto right on projects, e.g. if you don’t want to work for a specific customer due to moral reasons. There were several occasions that also our CEO used this right.

We offer you an unlimited work contract and flexible working hours (results orientation), with the options to work from home at least one day per week. You will be part of an extremely motivated interdisciplinary team, giving you all the possibilities to further develop yourself and to help us to build an industry anew.

DUDE CHEM strives to be a diverse and inclusive workplace where we can ALL be ourselves. We encourage job applications from people of all genders, backgrounds, and communities.

We are consequently state-of-the-art driven and we promise that we will always listen to your ideas. Our dynamic and flat hierarchies enable us to flexibly adapt our organizational structure to the level of expertise required in a project. Sometimes you will learn and sometimes you will have the lead in a project.

Open communication and direct feedback are values that we live every day. The conviction to do something that creates a positive impact in the world drives us forward. We are a young, enthusiastic team that likes each other very much and we’d be very pleased if you’d be interested in working with us!

Unfortunately, we neither are able to pay you BASF salaries, nor are we able to pay them to ourselves. However, we will do our best to pay you a competitive salary, considering your individual needs and the specific circumstances you are in. Additionally, you will receive stock options from our employee stock option pool so that you can participate in the success of the company. 28 days holiday per year, as well as an entirely paid for annual ticket for the public transport (“Deutschlandticket”) come on top of that.

We provide you with organic fruits, snacks, coffee & tea and non-alcoholic drinks in our offices and labs in Berlin. It is important for that you develop professionally, thus we support and offer coaching and job relevant trainings to you. Lastly, we have frequent company socials to have some fun.