Lydian
Staff Controls & Automation Engineer
Boston · Staff+
Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 21 days ago
PythonRESTPLCControlsLeadershipCollaborationSCADA
About the role
- 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.
- Lydian is backed by top climate investors including Congruent Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Union Square Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Grok Ventures, and Overture.
- In particular, we look for tenacious people who are energized by solving the hardest, highest impact problems that come their way.
Responsibilities
- Control Architecture & System Design
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Implement diagnostics and anomaly/fault detection
Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree with 10+ years of experience designing and owning automation systems for continuous chemical or energy processes
- Practical experience with state estimation and inferential sensing
- 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
- Strong foundation in control theory, process dynamics, multivariable interactions, and constraint management
- Hands-on deployment of MPC or other model-based controllers on real industrial systems
Compensation
- Competitive salary commensurate with experience
Benefits
- Meaningful equity compensation
- Generous PTO and expectation that all employees take significant time off to rest, recharge, and enjoy life outside work
- Excellent health insurance with 100% of healthcare, vision and dental premiums covered
- Build inferential "soft sensors" for reactor states, product composition, and equipment health.
Company info
- 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.
This listing is sourced directly from Lydian's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.