Vulcan Elements
Senior Materials & Process Engineer - Powder Metallurgy
Research Triangle Park, NC +1 · Senior · Full-time · Posted Jul 8, 2026
- Location
- Research Triangle Park, NC
Durham, North Carolina, United States - Experience
- 8+ years of hands-on engineering experience in powder metallurgy processing; industrial manufacturing setting preferred.
- Education
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Materials Science, Metallurgical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Visa sponsorship
- Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities.
About the job
Leads and optimizes powder metallurgy manufacturing for NdFeB magnets, scaling new formulations from pilot development to high-volume production while ensuring magnetic performance, material quality, and yield.
What you'll do
- Own and optimize powder processing, compaction, sintering, and post-sinter heat treatments.
- Correlate process variables with magnetic properties, microstructure, and part quality; lead failure analysis and corrective actions.
- Transition alloy compositions to high-volume production and define specifications for manufacturing equipment.
What they ask for
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Materials Science, Metallurgical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 8+ years of hands-on engineering experience in powder metallurgy processing.
- Experience with reactive metal powder processing, protective inert atmospheres, vacuum thermal processing, and advanced sintering kinetics.
- Experience with materials characterization and analytical techniques such as SEM, XRD, TGA/DSC; strong experience in design of experiments and statistical processing.
Nice to have
- Direct experience manufacturing sintered NdFeB permanent magnets and grain boundary diffusion processes.
- Experience with Python, MATLAB, or JMP; familiarity with ISO 9001 or IATF 16949.
Tools
SEM, XRD, TGA/DSC, Python, MATLAB, JMP, ISO 9001, IATF 16949
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative