Senior Material Science and Growth Engineer
Besxar · Washington · $165,000–$234,000 (stated in the posting)
Senior Material Science & Growth Engineer
Semiconductor Materials & Epitaxy
About Us
Besxar Space Industries, Inc. (Besxar) is building off-Earth foundries that use the natural ultra-high vacuum of space as a manufacturing input. Our Fabships are designed to produce trusted, ultra-high-yield semiconductor materials that are difficult or impossible to make on Earth at comparable purity and defect performance.
We are not building a science project; we are building a new industrial capability. That means real hardware, rapid iteration, disciplined execution, and a willingness to challenge assumptions from first principles as we design, fly, learn, and improve mission by mission.
About the Team
Semiconductor materials and growth are the heart of Besxar’s product — the reason the company exists. This role sits at the core of Fabship development: owning the growth processes and material outcomes that define our yield, purity, and defect performance, and translating ambiguous mission and business requirements into repeatable, manufacturable growth recipes and hardware. You will help define how the materials and growth team operates as we scale, and you will be one of the earliest technical hires shaping the foundational materials science, IP, and manufacturing systems from the ground up.
You will work shoulder-to-shoulder with systems, mechanical, electrical, software, manufacturing, and test to develop and fly growth hardware on real schedules. The expectation is hands-on leadership across recipe development, deposition and epitaxy, in-situ and ex-situ characterization, build, bring-up, integration, test, failure learning, and design iteration. This is frontier R&D in service of an industrial outcome — not a research lab — so the bar is turning unknowns into processes that produce hardware mission after mission.
Roles & Responsibilities
- Lead semiconductor materials growth and epitaxial process R&D for Besxar Fabships, including recipe development, trade studies, detailed process design, and integration strategy across deposition sources, growth chambers, vacuum systems, substrates, and supporting tooling.
- Develop and optimize advanced semiconductor material growth and epitaxial processes, owning the relationship between process parameters and material quality — crystallinity, composition, doping, defect density, thickness uniformity, and interface abruptness.
- Design and run experiments to understand material behavior, growth dynamics, and process interactions in environments where many variables are still unknown; build foundational understanding from first principles.
- Characterize semiconductor materials and growth outputs using techniques such as SEM, XRD, and spectroscopy; interpret experimental data and close the loop back into process improvements.
- Operate, maintain, and improve advanced vacuum and thin-film deposition systems, including source preparation, chamber conditioning, leak and contamination control, and in-situ diagnostics.
- Translate mission and system requirements into manufacturable, repeatable growth processes that balance material performance, yield, throughput, contamination sensitivity, serviceability, cost, and schedule.
- Partner with mechanical, electrical, software, and systems engineering to define growth-hardware requirements, instrumentation, and control, and to integrate growth subsystems into Fabships.
- Build the foundational process and materials knowledge base — recipes, process windows, characterization standards, and design-of-experiments practices — for an entirely new manufacturing platform.
- Contribute to scaling experimental growth processes into repeatable manufacturing systems, including transfer from lab to flight hardware and definition of process control and acceptance criteria.
- Bring a strong lessons-learned mindset: use prior process experience, build feedback, supplier issues, characterization data, and failure investigations to improve each material and process revision and avoid repeating mistakes.
- Lead or contribute to design and process reviews, root-cause investigations, and anomaly resolution with a high bar for clear communication and sound technical judgment.
- Help define how materials and growth engineering is done at Besxar, including process documentation, characterization protocols, data management, and cross-functional review norms.
- Mentor other engineers and scientists and contribute technical leadership as the materials and growth team grows.
Basic Qualifications
- Master's degree or PhD in Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, Semiconductor Physics, or a similar technical discipline (advanced degree a plus), or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of progressive experience in semiconductor materials and growth — epitaxy, crystal growth, or thin-film process development — taking processes from experimentation through repeatable, manufacturable outcomes.
- Strong background in Semiconductor Materials and Growth, grounded in Materials Science and/or Electrical Engineering, with a working understanding of how these materials are grown, characterized, and used.
- Hands-on experience with semiconductor materials, epitaxial growth, crystal growth, thin films, deposition systems, or closely related domains.
- Hands-on experience operating and troubleshooting vacuum systems and thin-film deposition technologies such as MBE, CVD, PVD, ALD, sputtering, or evaporation.
- Demonstrated proficiency with materials characterization techniques such as SEM, XRD, and spectroscopy (or related analysis tools), including interpreting experimental data to drive process decisions.
- Experience characterizing semiconductor materials and interpreting experimental data to improve material quality and performance.
- Strong experimental mindset — able to troubleshoot, iterate, and solve first-principles problems quickly in R&D-heavy environments.
- Demonstrated ability to operate as a self-starter in highly ambiguous environments; you can define experiments, make sound tradeoffs, and deliver without heavy oversight.
- Demonstrated ability to apply lessons learned from prior process work, build issues, and characterization outcomes to improve robustness, manufacturability, and development speed.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document assumptions and methods, present at reviews, and drive cross-functional alignment.
- Startup mentality: high ownership, fast execution, low ego.
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience with additional characterization methods — AFM, TEM, XPS, photoluminescence, ellipsometry, RHEED, or electrical/Hall transport measurements.
- Semiconductor fabrication or foundry experience.
- Experience scaling experimental semiconductor processes toward production environments.
- Experience with design of experiments (DOE), statistical process control, or data-driven process optimization.
- Experience developing hardware or processes for vacuum, thermal, vibration, or other demanding environments.
- Prior startup, skunkworks, or advanced R&D engineering experience.
- Excited by deep tech, semiconductors, space, and frontier manufacturing technologies.
- Experience mentoring engineers or scientists and helping set standards for a growing team.
- Experience supporting export-controlled or ITAR-sensitive hardware development environments.
Culture
We value first-principles thinkers who move with urgency and take ownership. We expect engineers to build the system, not just the component; chase down answers; communicate clearly; and use lessons learned to make each build better. We give people autonomy and expect accountability in return. Launch windows and test campaigns can be intense, but we work as a collaborative team that respects one another and stays focused on execution.
ITAR Requirements
This role may require access to export-controlled information. We will follow applicable laws and regulations and work with our compliance function to determine eligibility and required authorizations.
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicants must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
Base salary will vary depending on job-related knowledge, education, skills, experience, business needs, and market demand. Salary is just one component of our comprehensive compensation package.