Staff Controls & Automation Engineer
Lydian builds modular, turnkey plants that convert CO₂ and hydrogen into synthetic aviation fuel.
About Lydian Labs, Inc.
Lydian Labs, Inc. is a climate-technology company founded in 2021 that develops the PIVOT™ platform: standardized, turnkey plants for producing synthetic aviation fuel from captured CO₂ and hydrogen. The company says its Boston pilot has been producing fuel since 2024 and that it is scaling toward commercial volumes beginning in 2028.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
Design, build, and own controls architecture for pilot, demonstration, and commercial plants, including PLC and safety-PLC logic, state-based and advanced controls, soft sensors, diagnostics, commissioning, simulation, analysis, version control, documentation, and change management.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree with 10+ years of experience designing and owning automation systems for continuous chemical or energy processes.
- Strong foundation in control theory, process dynamics, multivariable interactions, and constraint management.
- Practical experience with state estimation and inferential sensing.
- Hands-on deployment of model predictive control or other model-based controllers on real industrial systems.
- Expertise with PLC platforms and SCADA/HMI systems.
- Deep experience with interlocks, permissives, safety logic, shutdowns, and hazardous industrial systems.
- Experience with thermochemical systems, especially catalytic systems.
- Experience integrating advanced control with DCS platforms.
- Familiarity with Python or similar tools for prototyping estimation and control algorithms.
- Experience in FOAK hardware or fast-moving industrial startup environments.
- Ability to make advanced control practical and easy to understand.
Responsibilities
- Architect the full control stack for pilot, demonstration, and commercial plants.
- Define the hierarchy linking base, supervisory, and advanced control.
- Develop modular control logic in PLCs and safety PLCs.
- Own interlocks, permissives, fail-safe behavior, alarm logic, and safety instrumented functions.
- Implement state-based control and state estimators.
- Build soft sensors, diagnostics, and anomaly and fault detection.
- Validate and tune advanced controllers through simulation, staged deployment, and field commissioning.
- Identify and implement model predictive control or other model-based controllers.
- Develop simulation or digital-twin models for new control strategies.
- Collaborate with process, mechanical, electrical, and operations teams.
- Support commissioning, plant bring-up, troubleshooting, and continuous optimization.
- Drive version control, documentation, and management-of-change practices.
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Generous paid time off
- Health insurance with 100% of healthcare, vision, and dental premiums covered
- 401(k) with company match