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Form Energy is building long-duration iron-air battery systems to revolutionize energy storage and strengthen the electric grid. The company has been recognized by TIME, MIT Technology Review, and Fast Company for innovation, and is scaling production at its first high-volume manufacturing facility in West Virginia.
This role owns cost engineering for Form's novel battery chemistry supply chain—a function that does not yet exist in the market. You will build and lead the strategic cost capability that shapes how Form designs, sources, and prices its product from the ground up. This is not a cost-tracking or accounting function; it sits at the intersection of engineering, sourcing, and finance, and directly influences product decisions and supplier negotiations.
Key responsibilities include:
- Developing and continuously improving should-cost models for raw materials, fabricated components, and capital equipment using activity-based costing, parametric modeling, and process-based cost breakdowns. Set the standard for how Form estimates cost before supplier quotes exist.
- Establishing cost benchmarking practices adapted to a novel chemistry with a developing supply base, drawing on best practices from automotive, aerospace, electronics, and industrial manufacturing. Track commodity, labor, and overhead trends and integrate this intelligence into sourcing and design decisions early.
- Leading supplier negotiations using cost models to evaluate quotations, identify leverage, and drive cost transparency with Global Supply Managers on high-stakes deals.
- Partnering with product and manufacturing engineering early in the design cycle to ensure cost is a design input, not a post-hoc audit. Translate cost model output into specific, actionable feedback that changes outcomes.
- Feeding cost forecasts and risk into Sales and Operations Planning and the annual build plan, giving Finance and the executive team clear visibility into unit economics as volume scales.
- Building the cost engineering function from the ground up: establishing tools, data structures, methodologies, and leading a team of cost engineers and analysts as the group scales with production volume.
Relocation assistance is available.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years in cost engineering, finance, manufacturing engineering, or strategic sourcing, including should-cost modeling and supplier cost negotiation, ideally in automotive, aerospace, electronics, or industrial manufacturing
- Direct experience building or scaling a cost engineering capability, not only operating within an established one
- Fluency in activity-based costing, parametric cost modeling, and cost breakdown analysis from BOMs, drawings, or samples
- Track record of using cost models to change supplier negotiations and design outcomes, not just to report variance
- Comfort operating with limited market data and building estimation methodology where none exists
- People leadership experience or clear readiness to build and lead a team
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical, industrial, or materials engineering, or equivalent experience; advanced degree or continued technical credibility is a plus
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving, first-of-a-kind manufacturing environment where answers are not always in a database
