Lead Metallurgical Process Engineer — Metallurgy and Heavy Forging

About the role

The Nuclear Company is hiring a Lead Metallurgical Process Engineer to define how Project FORGE manufactures ultra-large, safety-critical metal components. This is the foundational technical role on the FORGE Engineering Cell—the person who owns process design from feedstock materials to ultra-large raw-forged components.

This is a role for someone who wants to study the best forging operations in the world, understands the physics that make them work, and then design something fundamentally better. The goal is a step capital efficiency, and quality.

The role will be remote to start with an expected relocation to Washington, DC in 2027.

Responsibilities

• Define the process flow for ultra-large forging operations: melting, casting, ingot conditioning, forging sequences, and heat treatment.
• Study existing world-class facilities (JSW Muroran, Doosan Changwon, Sheffield Forgemasters, CFHI, North American Forgemasters) to understand current best practice, and then systematically challenge assumptions about why each process step exists and how it should be executed.
• Understand the process steps, parameters, and physical/chemical phenomena that drive homogenization and impurity removal during large ingot casting.
• Develop forging process models from first principles: deformation mechanics, thermal profiles, microstructural evolution, and die design for components including reactor pressure vessel shells, steam generator forgings, turbine rotor shafts, and defense applications.
• Identify opportunities to fundamentally improve quality, energy consumption, and capital equipment requirements relative to existing global benchmarks.
• Collaborate with the project team to produce equipment cost and construction schedule estimates to drive project stage gate deliverables.
• Develop the preliminary process design basis document that will feed into detailed engineering.