Additive Manufacturing Development Engineer, Freeform
Early Career
$85-200k
+ Stock Options
Relocation assistance provided
Office located in Hawthorne, CA
Metal 3D printing factories
Job no longer available
Metal 3D printing factories
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
$85-200k
+ Stock Options
Relocation assistance provided
Office located in Hawthorne, CA
21-100 employees
Company mission
To make the transformative power of 3D printing available to all industries at scale and unlock the future of innovation.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering from an ABEIT accredited university or college
- Hands-on professional or academic experience with metal 3D printing
Desirable
- Master’s degree in mechanical engineering or aerospace engineering
- Strong academic track record
- Passion for additive manufacturing
- Scrappy, first-principles approach to solving hard problems
- Team-oriented mindset and positive attitude
- Detail oriented with excellent verbal, graphical, and technical communication skills
- DMLS (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) or LPBF (Laser Powder Bed Fusion) experience
- Process development experience for metal additive manufacturing
- Scripting experience in Matlab (or similar) for toolpath generation
- Experience working with internal and/or external customers
- Mechanical systems design experience
What the job involves
- As an Additive Manufacturing Development Engineer at Freeform, you will play a critical role in the development of our advanced metal 3D printing technology including machine functionality, part quality analysis, print file preparation/generation, and providing DFAM recommendations for some of the world’s largest manufacturers
- You will own projects from cradle to grave as a responsible engineer, taking customer designs from concept through printing, testing, and delivery
- You will develop a fundamental understanding of the printing factory and will leverage your technical insights to advance system capabilities using a first principles mindset
- This is a unique opportunity to work alongside and learn from leaders and pioneers in the metal additive manufacturing space to disrupt the industry with our autonomous printing factory technology
- Understand printing system capabilities and roadmap, and work with internal engineering teams (mechanical, electrical, software) to implement solutions that further automate the printing process for high volume production
- Drive all stages of print production development including design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) feedback, file preparation, printing, post processing, and quality control
- Analyze in-situ data and post-print part quality to drive continuous improvement
- Use first-principles thinking to understand problems, define test methods, evaluate solutions, iterate and provide technical recommendations to internal and external stakeholders
- Document application requirements and objectives, statements of work, standard operating procedures, next steps and action items to align all internal and external team members
- Interface with external customers to communicate Freeform’s technical capabilities; work with customers on improving Design for Additive Manufacturing (DFAM)
- Contribute to Freeform’s internal technology development with feedback from internal and external stakeholders via detailed design and systems level improvements
Our take
There is a huge amount of demand for precision metal fabrication in future-focused industries such as rocketry and vehicle manufacturing, but legacy production techniques are too slow and inflexible to meet the requirements of rapidly changing designs in the most innovative firms. Enter Freeform Future, a company which builds metal 3D printing factories to allow manufacturers to swiftly and efficiently go from idea to mass production.
Founded by engineers with extensive experience at SpaceX, Freeform seeks to replace existing metal fabrication works - typified with heavy reliance on manual labour and legacy processes - with 3D printers and automated software technologies. Rather than needing to train a large workforce on production techniques, Freeform will be able to print almost any metal item at production scale on demand, with a turnaround time of days rather than weeks.
Though having only emerged from stealth in 2023, Freeform has some large-scale customers including autonomous trucking firm Embark and rocket part manufacturer, Ursa Major. After raising significant funding in early 2023, the company is moving from prototype to production, scaling up its operations to meet the growing demand for rapidly produced, high-quality metal components.
Steph
Company Specialist
Insights
Company
Funding (1 round)
Feb 2023
$45m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $45m
Company benefits
- Significant stock option packages
- 100% employer-paid Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance (premium PPO and HMO options)
- Life insurance
- Traditional and Roth 401(k)
- Relocation assistance provided
- Paid vacation, sick leave, and company holidays
- Generous Paid Parental Leave and extended transition back to work for the birthing parent
- Free daily catered lunch and dinner, and fully stocked kitchenette
- Casual dress, flexible work hours, and regular catered team building events
Company HQ
Hawthorne, CA
Articles
Leadership
Erik Palitsch
(CEO)Previously was Propulsion Development Manager at SpaceX. Before that was a Solid Propulsion Systems Engineer for NASA.
Thomas Ronacher
(President)Before co-founding Freeform, was VP Hardware Engineering at Hyperloop One and Thermal System Lead for Virgin Galactic. Prior to that was Principal Design Engineer with Seal Science and Senior Propulsion Analyst at SpaceX.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 14 more jobs at Freeform