Hydrometallurgical Process Engineer

Responsibilities

• Lead hydrometallurgical process equipment scopes from concept development and modeling validation through procurement, detailed engineering, fabrication, installation, commissioning, and ramp-up.
• Manage external technology licensors, equipment vendors, and engineering partners to deliver fully integrated and performant hydrometallurgical refining systems.
• Develop detailed heat and material balances for complex hydrometallurgical process trains, including leaching, solution purification, solvent extraction/ion exchange, precipitation, crystallization, and residue handling.
• Build hydraulic models and process flow diagrams/P&IDs for hydrometallurgical circuits, ensuring operability, reliability, and safety.
• Create first-principles models of chemical reactors and unit operations (e.g., leach reactors, autoclaves, SX settlers, IX columns, precipitation reactors, filtration systems) to validate scale-up and derisk commercial designs.
• Identify, evaluate, and implement engineering solutions to optimize extraction, purification, and recovery processes under varying chemistry, feedstock qualities, and operating conditions.
• Collaborate deeply with R&D, lab staff, pilot-plant engineers, and operations teams to translate bench-scale insights into robust and scalable hydrometallurgical flowsheets.
• Work closely with software and machine-learning teams to automate process-engineering workflows and develop advanced control, optimization, and digital-twin models for hydrometallurgical reactors and plants.

Requirements

• Strong understanding of engineering fundamentals and demonstrated ability to solve challenging problems.
• Strong foundation in chemical engineering, metallurgical engineering, or process engineering, with demonstrated ability to apply engineering fundamentals to complex hydrometallurgical systems.
• Experience with equipment engineering and design, including brownfield modifications and upgrades of process equipment (e.g., leach tanks, reactors, filtration systems, solvent extraction circuits).
• Experience with greenfield design of hydrometallurgical unit operations and integrated circuits.
• Troubleshooting, evaluation, and optimization of operating hydrometallurgical or chemical-process equipment.
• Experience in hydrometallurgical mineral processing or metal refining, large-scale mining, critical-minerals processing, or battery-materials production, industrial chemical manufacturing with complex aqueous/chemical reaction systems, or EPC/EPCM firms supporting mining and mineral processing industry projects.