Lead Scientist

Job description

**About Halo Materials** Halo Materials is a venture-backed advanced materials company pioneering novel technologies to produce domestic, cost-competitive graphite for advanced energy and manufacturing supply chains. Headquartered in New Mexico, home to world-class national laboratories and a fast-growing deep tech ecosystem, we are building a scalable, lower-emissions process to produce high-performance graphite critical to the batteries that power grid storage, EVs, AI datacenters, drones, and consumer electronics. Our leadership team brings decades of experience building and scaling hard tech companies across energy, mobility, and advanced materials, with backgrounds at Tesla, Cruise, Pajarito Powder, and DOE-funded startups, including multiple ventures that have been successfully acquired. The founders care deeply about building technology that strengthens energy systems and domestic manufacturing, while cultivating a high-functioning, supportive team culture. Backed by Roadrunner Venture Studios, Halo combines ambitious research and engineering with the operational support, capital access, and long-term vision needed to grow both the company and the people inside it. ### About the Role Halo Materials is seeking a Lead Scientist to work closely with the CTO to advance our technical priorities. This is a high-impact role ideal for someone who enjoys defining and executing upon a research plan, moves fluidly between modeling “what should be tested” and getting their hands dirty in the lab, and relishes the challenge of building an R&D-heavy company from the ground up. You’ll own the experimental roadmap of Halo Materials as we progress from lab-scale testing to commercial-scale reactor design and systems integration. This will entail designing and leading experiments, setting up and troubleshooting equipment, managing lab technicians, and data analysis to feed into future experiments. This is a hands-on technical leadership position for someone who thrives in deep tech environments and can move seamlessly between lab bench execution, team leadership, and high-level technical strategy. **Key Responsibilities** - Lead installation, calibration, commissioning, and troubleshooting of core lab equipment to rapidly expand experimental capacity. - Design and execute rigorous design-of-experiments (DOE) programs to optimize graphite growth parameters such as temperature, feedstock composition, residence time, and process conditions. - Identify performance drivers, bottlenecks, and failure modes to continuously improve yield, purity, energy efficiency, and scalability. - Build scalable systems for experimental data collection, storage, and analysis to ensure high-quality, decision-ready insights. - Translate lab results into techno-economic inputs (e.g. cost per kg, energy intensity, throughput) to inform commercialization strategy. - Develop and document SOPs for safe, repeatable, and scalable lab operations. - Co-manage and mentor lab technicians to expand experimental capacity and execution speed. - Train and develop junior technical hires, building a culture of rigor, ownership, and continuous improvement. - Collaborate with external research partners to investigate underlying graphite growth mechanisms and unlock performance improvements. - Work closely with peer R&D scientists and executive leadership to align technical milestones with company strategy and commercial objectives. **Qualifications** - Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Materials Engineering, or closely related field - 8+ years of experience in rigorous research and development environments such as university labs, deep tech startups, or corporate research teams. - Proven ability to lead complex, multi-stakeholder projects—ideally involving lab environments, infrastructure, tech transfer, or industrial process scale-up. - Strong organizational, strategic, and analytical skills; comfortable toggling between tactical execution and high-level planning. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences. - Demonstrated success working closely with C-level leaders and managing competing priorities. - Technical literacy in engineering, materials science, or chemical processes. **Nice to Have:** - Experience in adjacent industries where similar high-temperature, catalytic, carbon, or materials growth processes are used — such as petrochemicals, advanced ceramics, specialty chemicals, battery materials, semiconductors, metallurgy, or industrial gas processing. - Experience with government grants, compliance reporting, or lab buildouts. **What We Look For (Beyond the Resume)** - A track record of execution — how you design experiments, make decisions with imperfect data, and drive results matters as much as where you’ve worked. - Comfort operating in both research and production environments; experience in one or both is valuable, but your ability to move science toward application is what counts. - Ownership mentality with high accountability and curiosity. - Entrepreneurial speed balanced with technical discipline. - Grit, resilience, and an ability to turn ambiguity into actionable next steps.