Metallurgical Engineering Intern

Making the Metals Powering the World

Solcoa is building the next generation of American metalmaking, starting with rare earths — the metals of power and motion. We've developed a new chemistry that converts rare earth oxides into high-purity metals — the materials inside every EV, fighter jet, wind turbine, and data center — cleaner, cheaper, and faster than any conventional process. Now we're scaling it to thousands of tonnes of annual production.

The Role

Join our process team and help convert rare-earth oxides into high-purity metals. You’ll support reactor operations, run experiments and characterize feed materials and products, working with metallurgists, chemists and technicians to move from lab-scale experiments to repeatable production.

What You’ll Do

• Assist with high-temperature and high-vacuum reactor operations.
• Help characterize feed materials and products using ICP-OES, SEM-EDS, LECO O/N.
• Run furnace cycles, collect process data, and summarize results to inform design iterations.
• Maintain organized logs of process parameters, equipment conditions, and sample tracking.
• Support equipment maintenance: vacuum systems, induction coils, thermocouples, and gas handling.
• Contribute to safety-first culture and continuous improvement on the facility floor.

What You Bring

• Required
• Pursuing a BS/MS in Metallurgical Engineering, Materials Science, or related field.
• Exposure to pyrometallurgy, electrometallurgy, or high-temperature processing (coursework or labs).
• Hands-on experience from labs, foundry work, internships, or personal projects (furnaces, casting, heat treatment).
• Detail-oriented, disciplined documentation, and reliable follow-through.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, hardware-centric environment and willing to get your hands dirty.
• On-site availability; able to start soon.
• Preferred
• Experience with vacuum or inert-atmosphere furnace operation.
• Familiarity with rare-earth metallurgy, molten salt electrolysis, or reactive metal processing.
• Basic thermodynamic analysis skills (Ellingham diagrams, phase diagrams, FactSage/HSC a plus).
• Welding or basic machining experience (mill/lathe).
• Python/MATLAB for data analysis.