Materials Characterization Specialist II, Chemistry and Powers

About the Team:

The Materials and NDE (Non-Destructive Evaluation) team plays a central role in enabling Terran R to fly, re-fly, and scale: developing, characterizing, and inspecting materials and processes across all parts of the vehicle. From welding and additive manufacturing to advanced composites, the team works at the intersection of innovation and execution, balancing performance and reliability with cost, quality, and schedule. As we move toward first flight and beyond, the challenges become more exciting, offering opportunities to shape how we design and develop for re-use. With ownership across products, systems, and disciplines, engineers gain broad exposure and drive key decisions across design, manufacturing, and operations.

About the Role:

• Own and operate the chemistry and powder characterization test areas — inert gas fusion (IGF) for O/N/H, spark OES, XRF, and particle size and shape analysis — from sample preparation through reported result
• Author and validate standard-referenced test methods and work instructions for those test areas, and establish the calibration, verification, and records schedules that hold them under AS9100 and ISO 17025
• Characterize metal powder for additive manufacturing including particle size distribution, flow behavior and morphology, and perform lot qualification and acceptance covering oxygen pickup and virgin versus reused comparison
• Own the chemistry and powder request queue, set and hold commit dates, and escalate when a method or instrument cannot meet a date, and cross-cover the thermal analysis test area with the specialist who leads it
• Train Specialist I staff and interns on the chemistry and powder equipment, and advise engineers on test selection, test purpose, and what a given method can and cannot answer for a material

About You:

• AS/BS in Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Materials Science, Metallurgy or related, or equivalent hands-on experience
• 2–5 years hands-on lab test operations or materials characterization
• Analytical chemistry background — demonstrated depth in elemental or compositional analysis, on any technique
• Evidence of having written or validated a test method, work instruction, or SOP against a consensus standard such as ASTM, and able to read a method and set up to it
• Track record of owning a technique or an area rather than executing another person's instructions, having decided how the test was done and stood behind the result
• Technical judgment to interpret data, troubleshoot method and equipment problems, and recognize a bad result, including rejecting a number that does not hold up under schedule pressure

Nice to haves but not required:  

• IGF or combustion gas analysis for oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen — LECO, Bruker, Eltra or equivalent; and/or spark OES, especially calibration, type standardization or matrix-specific setup; experience commissioning a new analyzer from installation through validated first production use
• Metal powder characterization, ideally for additive manufacturing, including powder handling and lot qualification; XRF; thermal analysis (DSC, TGA, dilatometry, laser flash); metallography and SEM sample preparation
• Familiarity with ICP-OES and ICP-MS for trace and full-spectrum chemistry, combustion carbon and sulfur, wet chemistry and gravimetric methods, and organic or contamination analysis — enough to specify the request, set detection limits and acceptance criteria, and reconcile returned data against in-house results
• Aerospace or defense lab experience; AS9100 or ISO 17025 familiarity, especially method validation