Safety, Instrumentation & Controls Engineer

Role Overview

As a Safety, Instrumentation & Controls Engineer at Level Nine, you will be the internal owner and technical challenger for process safety concepts, control philosophies, instrumentation specifications, and automation architectures. You’ll join the core engineering team to deliver hands-on engineering work with direct impact as the company transitions toward executing its industrial demo plant.

Responsibilities

• Control Philosophy, P&IDs & Instrumentation

  • Draft, review, and release P&IDs and define control topologies.
  • Create cause-and-effect interlock matrices and alarm philosophies across process options.
  • Specify field instrumentation compatible with solvents, oxidants, and acidic media.
  • Define PLC/DCS control system architecture, including hardware requirements and communication protocols for skid-mounted modules.

• Process Safety, HAZOP & ATEX Compliance

  • Own internal process safety activities; lead HAZOP, LOPA, and SIL assessment studies with external advisors and FEED suppliers.
  • Establish ATEX zoning classifications.
  • Specify explosion-proof electrical/instrument equipment and prepare technical safety dossiers for German regulatory approvals in coordination with host sites and TÜV.
  • Design safety instrumented systems and emergency shutdown logic for:
    • exothermic reactions
    • hydrogen peroxide dosing loops
    • flammable vapor spaces

• FEED Supplier Interface & Site Co-Location Safety

  • Co-author deliverables for Level Nine’s basic design package and set clear specifications for external partners.
  • Lead safety, instrumentation, and control interactions with specialized engineering suppliers across conceptual design through construction.
  • Oversee control cabinet assembly, shop testing (FAT), and site acceptance testing (SAT).

• In-House R&D & Campaign Data/Control Backbone

  • Design and maintain campaign data infrastructure including batch records, historian/DAQ structure, alarm/event logs, sample timestamps, control recipes, and partner campaign data packages.
  • Build practical data acquisition and modeling tools for kinetic, thermal, mass/energy, and solvent recycle models (e.g., Python, Excel, Aspen, gPROMS, ChemCAD).
  • Ensure experiments and campaigns achieve strict reproducibility linking lab/pilot results to FEED evidence and analysis.

Requirements

• Technically grounded, high-agency engineering mindset; able to create structure while the process is still evolving.
• Strong capability to translate process design basis into safe, controlled, logged, and highly reproducible operations.
• Ownership experience with process safety and structured safety studies (e.g., HAZOP/LOPA/SIL).
• Ability to specify instrumentation and define PLC/DCS control architectures for skid-mounted modules.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with ATEX compliance and explosion-proof instrumentation/equipment specification.
• Familiarity with FEED processes and collaboration with external engineering suppliers.
• Experience building data acquisition and modeling workflows for process/R&D campaigns (Python and/or process modeling tools).