Job Description: Head Engineer (Industrial Process Engineering)

Who Are We?

Adaptavate is a business of the future, a dynamic team of engineers, thinkers, parents, dreamers, walkers, scientists, gardeners, friends, family, and visionaries. People who think differently to make a big impact through our work… together.

We are establishing a leading business to develop products that will spearhead the transition to carbon negative building materials of the future. This is done by developing, producing, and commercialising the next generation of carbon negative, plant based, high performance building materials for the construction sector.

Adaptavate has developed a carbon-negative alternative to standard plasterboard. We are backed by world leading carbon VC funds such as Counteract and the Low Carbon Innovation Fund and the UK Government (Innovate UK), putting our business in a strong financial position to scale. We want you to take the learnings from our pilot line and use this to design and plan a world first Industrial Scale demonstration of our technology.

It is purpose driven, industry changing work and we can’t wait for you to join us.

Your Role;

We are recruiting an industry leading Engineer who will use their experience from the construction products sector or heavy industrial process sector to help us on our path of being world leaders in carbon negative building materials.

We are commissioning our pilot production line in Bristol, UK. This first-of-a-kind production line will make Breathaboard for world renowned organizations and projects, in a continuous process demonstrative of an industrial scale process. We already have agreements securing the output of an industrial scale facility. This is where you come in.

Using the learnings and developments from our pilot line in Bristol, UK, we would like you to work alongside our CEO, CTO and Head of Operations to lead our Engineering team to:

· Cost, design and plan and in time deliver our next scale of facility in the UK, delivered within the next 1-2 years.
· This first industrial scale facility needs to have the future in mind, so you must be capable of leading a team to design, cost and project plan the first international Adaptavate board production centre, deployed by a production partner under licence, delivered within the next 3 years.
· Work alongside our licensee helping them to develop the business case for establishing their manufacturing centres on a global scale.

The output from this production center is a higher volume of product to meet international demand, and importantly, de-risking the scale up of a commercial scale plant, with international production partners.

You will;

• Demonstrate experience in analysing data and learnings from pilot lines to inform the design, cost and layout of the industrial scale facilities
• Take this data and work with third parties to optimise and adapt industry standard production lines to be capable of producing Adaptavate’s technology
• Demonstrate expertise in process optimisation, automation and technology implementation
• Lead the Adaptavate engineering, R+D team and third-party sub-contractors to find a commercially viable route to scale the production technology in line with strategic goals of a World-leading industrial business. This may include working with existing equipment manufacturers and designing and manufacturing bespoke equipment in house
• To lead the existing team on innovation projects using the current pilot production line, that may inform the design of the larger scales of production
• Work with the Senior Leadership team to construct commercial cases for industrial and commercial scale facilities for our licence partners
• Plan, resource and manage the delivery of the Industrial Demonstrator in the UK in 2024/25. Likely to be in the SW England or South Wales
• Design and ‘package’ a turnkey technology deployment package with potential production partners.

You have;

• Experience of costing, designing and planning large-scale continuous, integrated process based on powder and fibre inputs, hydration of and deposition of pastes and slurries as part of a continuous, industrial process
• Experience of curing/drying, preferable but not essential
• Experience of building £20mn+ building product or heavy industry production plants
• Managed technical teams where performance is balanced with wellbeing.
• Reported into board level on progress and key metrics.

What do you get in return?

This role has the potential to be part of a revolutionary business in our industry. The growth opportunities within Adaptavate are plentiful with an opportunity to grow in to Engineering Director.

The impact of our business is realised by the cohesion and growth of our team members. We aim to create a supportive and respectful working environment that enables you to thrive. Collectively, we are the change.

A collaborative environment, where fun, family, wellbeing, and success are well balanced. We have a cycle to work scheme in place and are located just off the Bristol to Bath cycle path in Bristol. Adaptavate is a business of the future. By working as a team, we will be successful in delivering this exciting, radical project. 

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