Senior Chemical Engineer - DAC System Modeling

About us

Rivan Industries (Rivan.com) is a synthetic fuel company designed to decarbonise heavy industry. We aim to make synthetic fuel cheaper than fossil fuels and sustain life on earth by keeping the CO2 locked underground.

We design and manufacture modular synthetic fuel plants consisting of a DAC system, an Alkaline Electrolyser, and a Sabatier Reactor, vertically integrating with off-grid DC solar and the European gas-grid. Here’s our entire business plan. We’ve recently deployed the UK’s largest synthetic fuel plant and are planning to 1000x this scale in the next 2 years.

Rivan’s bottleneck is not ideas, it’s knowing which ones are right.

We are looking for someone to build and own the models that determine what we design, build, and scale. You will develop first-principles and data-driven models of our lime-based DAC system and use them to make real engineering decisions. This is not a pure modelling role. Your work will directly influence hardware, operating conditions, and architecture selection.

The role:

• Build and own first-principles models of core DAC unit operations (carbonation, calcination, hydration)
• Translate experimental data into validated models that predict real system behaviour
• Identify dominant rate-limiting mechanisms across regimes (kinetics, diffusion, heat/mass transfer)

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• Define scaling laws and operating envelopes from lab → pilot → MW scale
• Work closely with experimental and design teams to validate models and resolve discrepancies
• Drive architecture decisions (e.g. fluidised vs moving bed, rotary vs flash calcination)
• Develop simple, robust models first, and only increase complexity when justified

Core skills:

• PhD or equivalent experience in chemical engineering or related field. We are open to strong recent PhD grads; or experienced ICs with demonstrated modelling ownership
• Strong first-principles and reduced-order modelling (heat/mass transfer, reaction engineering)
• Ability to build models in Python and/or MATLAB (not just use tools)
• Experience simplifying complex systems into tractable models

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• Experience validating models against experimental or real-world data
• Clear reasoning and ability to make decisions under uncertainty

Preferable skills:

• Experience with gas-solid systems (adsorption, calcination, gasification, pyrolysis, catalysis, decomposition etc.)
• Aspen, gPROMS, COMSOL, CFD experience

Specifics:

• £70-90k Salary depending on experience

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• Significant share options as part of the early team
• In-person work at our HQ in Bermondsey, South-East London
• Extensive relocation support, including £6000 per year extra to live close to our HQ
• Private health insurance
• Unlimited time-off

We encourage exceptional applicants from all backgrounds to apply for this role, even if they do not meet all the requirements listed.

If you don't see a current role that fits, we also welcome open applications via our website.

Apply at Rivan.com