About the role
Who we are
Europe’s chemical industry faces an existential crisis resulting from a deep dependence on volatile fossil feedstocks, regulatory pressures, and cut-throat competition from China and the Middle East. Locally abundant bio-based feedstocks offer an escape route from fossil feedstock dependency, but chemical companies lack the technologies to bring them online.
At Level Nine, we’re building an AI-driven catalyst discovery platform to produce key chemical building blocks from locally abundant bio-based feedstocks, reducing dependence on volatile global feedstock markets while using existing chemical manufacturing infrastructure.
About the team & role
We are an interdisciplinary team of scientists and operators, supported by leading advisors, networks, and VCs across Europe. We’re based in Berlin, one of Europe’s leading deep-tech hubs. We are not looking for corporate specialists who need a finished process and mature documentation. We need high-agency analytical builders who are curious, reliable, and technically grounded, creating structure while the process is still evolving.
As we transition towards executing our industrial demo plant, we are navigating developing a chemical process that requires robust process safety, structured discipline, precise control loops, and ATEX compliance. You will serve as our internal owner and technical challenger for process safety concepts, control philosophies, instrumentation specifications, and automation architectures.
You will join our core engineering team to take on real, hands-on engineering work with direct impact. You will establish the control logic, P&IDs, instrument lists, and cause-and-effect interlocks for our design package, direct specialised skid-mounted engineering suppliers, build our campaign data backbone, upgrade our in-house pilot rigs, and ensure customer sampling campaigns achieve strict reproducibility. Your job is to challenge and translate our process design basis into safe, controlled, logged, and highly reproducible operation.
Tasks
Control Philosophy, P&IDs & Instrumentation:
• Draft, review, and release complete P&IDs, control topologies, cause-and-effect interlock matrices, and alarm philosophies across our process options
• Specify field instrumentation compatible with solvents, oxidants, and acidic media
• Establish PLC/DCS control system architecture, hardware requirements, and communication protocols for skid-mounted modules
Process Safety, HAZOP & ATEX Compliance:
• Be the internal owner for process safety, leading formal HAZOP, LOPA, and SIL assessment studies alongside external advisors and FEED suppliers
• Establish ATEX zoning classifications, specify explosion-proof electrical and instrument equipment, and prepare technical safety dossiers for local German regulatory approvals in coordination with host sites and TÜV
• Design safety instrumented systems and emergency shutdown logic for exothermic reactions, hydrogen peroxide dosing loops, and flammable vapour spaces
FEED Supplier Interface & Site Co-Location Safety:
• Co-author Level Nine's basic design package deliverables to set clear specifications for external partners
• Lead safety, instrumentation, and control interactions with specialised engineering suppliers through conceptual design, basic design, detailed engineering, and construction
• Oversee control cabinet assembly, shop testing, FAT, and SAT
In-House R&D & Campaign Data/Control:
• Design and maintain our campaign data infrastructure, including batch records, historian/DAQ structure, alarm/event logs, sample timestamps, control recipes, and partner campaign data packages. This backbone is what links laboratory/pilot experiments to reproducible results, FEED evidence, and GAP analysis
• Implement practical data acquisition and modelling tools for kinetic, thermal, mass/energy, and solvent recycle models, using appropriate tools such as Python, Excel, Aspen, gPROMS, ChemCAD, or similar
• Oversee control parameters during external partner campaigns, establishing standardised control protocols and logging systems to guarantee under 5% batch-to-batch variation
Requirements
• 3–5+ years of hands-on working experience drafting and verifying P&IDs, specifying instrumentation, and designing control philosophies, cause-and-effect matrices, and safety interlocks for chemical process plants
• Demonstrated experience executing HAZOP/LOPA studies, ATEX zoning (Directives 2014/34/EU and 1999/92/EC), Seveso III compliance, and managing energetic or solvent reactions (peroxides, flammable solvents)
• Proven track record generating basic design control documentation and managing modular skid fabricators (such as Zeton) through detail design, FAT, and SAT
• Ability to collect data and model it using tools to draw FEED conclusions, establish dynamic models, and link experiments to reproducible results
• Professional German proficiency (C1+, strictly required to lead HAZOPs, liaise with German regulatory authorities like TÜV/Bezirksregierung, and negotiate with local EPCs and fabricators) and fluent English
• High agency, first-principles thinking, and practical engineering judgment. You treat safety not as a bureaucratic exercise of filling out forms, but as an opportunity to build safe, elegant, and workable systems in a fast-paced startup. You are comfortable getting your hands dirty troubleshooting sensors, control valves, or wiring on pilot rigs
Pluses:
• Experience building batch records, DAQ structures, or campaign data packages
• Degree in a relevant engineering field with a process safety specialisation
• Practical familiarity with Pressure Equipment Directive (PED 2014/68/EU) and SIL ratings (IEC 61508/61511)
Though we have a number of hard criteria above, our hiring ethos is focussed on attitude over aptitude. This is far from a desk-only job, and we seek an out-of-the-box thinker who brings an entrepreneurial sp