Staff Controls & Automation Engineer

Job description

COMPANY OVERVIEW Lydian is developing the lowest cost sustainable fuels from waste CO2, water, and renewable electricity to decarbonize the aviation industry. Our breakthrough technology replaces oil and gas refining with fully electrified, modular, and flexible reactor systems that produce fuel with 95% lower emissions than traditional jet fuel. Since our founding in 2021, Lydian has achieved key milestones in record time, including the production of our first liquid fuel from our pilot system, capable of producing ~10,000 gallons of fuel per year for a fraction of the capital and time of alternative approaches. Lydian is backed by top climate investors including Congruent Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Union Square Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Grok Ventures, and Overture. We are building a motivated, diverse, and collaborative team that is passionate about addressing the growing climate crisis and is committed to excellence in their work. In particular, we look for tenacious people who are energized by solving the hardest, highest impact problems that come their way. POSITION OVERVIEW Lydian is hiring for a Staff Controls & Automation Engineer that will design, build, and own a state-of-the-art controls architecture for our novel chemical process. You will begin with designing and implementing a sophisticated, operator-friendly control system on our pilot plant, but your ultimate goal is to enable an automated, remote operation of our plants at every scale. The ideal candidate is intimately familiar with classical control and automation equipment but also possess the skills and experience to push beyond PLCs, and integrate advanced control techniques into a robust and maintainable control system. RESPONSIBILITIES - Control Architecture & System Design - Architect the full control stack for pilot → demo → commercial plants, including PLCs, safety PLCs, SCADA/HMI, historian, networking, alarm philosophy, and mode/state logic - Define a clear hierarchy linking base control, supervisory control, and advanced control (state estimation, MPC) - Pilot Plant Automation & Implementation - Develop structured, modular control logic in PLCs and safety PLCs, including reusable AOIs/function blocks for valves, heaters, compressors, and reactors - Own interlocks, permissives, fail-safe behavior, alarm logic, and safety instrumented functions - Implement robust state-based control, including state estimators to infer unmeasured internal process variables and stabilize noisy measurements - Build inferential “soft sensors” for reactor states, product composition, and equipment health. Implement diagnostics and anomaly/fault detection - Advanced Controls - Over time, validate and tune advanced controllers through simulation, staged deployment, and coordinated field commissioning - Identify multivariable, constraint-heavy loops suitable for MPC or other model-based controllers and implement MPC in a suitable environment - Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration - Work with external software vendors and other team members to build analysis and tuning tools to support R&D campaigns, long-term performance evaluation, and algorithm refinement - Develop simulation or digital-twin models to safely prototype new control strategies - Collaborate with process, mechanical, electrical, and operations teams to translate process requirements into robust, maintainable control logic - Support commissioning, plant bring-up, troubleshooting, and continuous optimization - Drive rigorous version control, documentation, and management-of-change practices QUALIFICATIONS - Bachelor's Degree with 10+ years of experience designing and owning automation systems for continuous chemical or energy processes - Strong foundation in control theory, process dynamics, multivariable interactions, and constraint management - Practical experience with state estimation and inferential sensing - Hands-on deployment of MPC or other model-based controllers on real industrial systems - Expertise with PLC platforms and SCADA/HMI systems - Deep experience with interlocks, permissives, safety logic, shutdowns, and high-temperature/high-pressure/flammable gas systems - Ability to make advanced control practical and easy to understand - Experience with thermochemical systems, especially catalytic systems - Experience integrating advanced control with DCS platforms (DeltaV, PCS7, Honeywell Experion, Yokogawa Centum) - Familiarity with Python or similar tools for prototyping estimation and control algorithms. - Experience in FOAK hardware or fast-moving industrial startup environments where flexibility and autonomy are required COMPANY CULTURE AND BENEFITS - Challenging, collaborative, and meaningful work and an important voice in company development - Competitive salary commensurate with experience - Meaningful equity compensation - Generous PTO allowing employees to take time off to rest, recharge, and enjoy life outside work - Excellent insurance with 100% of healthcare, vision, and dental premiums covered for the employee, and 80% coverage for dependents - 401(k) with company match