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Plantible Foods, a venture-backed biology company backed by Astanor Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Piva Capital, Kellogg's, and Vectr Ventures, is developing next-generation commercial production facilities for plant-based ingredients. The Downstream Project Engineer will own the engineering and field execution of systems that convert harvested biomass into consistent, high-quality products.
You will sit between Plantible's process experts and the people designing, supplying, and building facilities. Your scope includes biomass preparation, extraction, separation, filtration, purification, concentration, drying, powder handling, packaging, CIP (clean-in-place), and the process utilities and controls supporting them.
Key responsibilities span five major areas:
**Connect the Engineering:** Translate requirements from Engineering, R&D, Operations, Maintenance, and Food Safety teams into clear scopes for external partners and vendors. Coordinate multiple disciplines (process, mechanical, piping, civil, structural, electrical, controls, utilities, facility infrastructure). Ensure every system interface has an owner, drive technical decisions to closure, maintain engineering deliverables against project schedule, and surface gaps early.
**Develop the Facility:** Support FEL, conceptual design, FEED, and detailed engineering for assigned systems. Coordinate development and review of Basis of Design documents, equipment lists, utility requirements, layouts, specifications, and drawings. Lead design reviews with subject-matter experts, Operations, and external engineers. Challenge designs for safety, constructability, operability, maintainability, hygienic design, cost, and complexity. Translate lessons from existing facilities into engineering standards and repeatable design packages.
**Buy the Equipment:** Develop technical scopes and bid packages for equipment, materials, and engineered systems. Coordinate RFQs, technical evaluations, bid leveling, and vendor selection. Manage vendor drawings, calculations, data, and documentation. Track major equipment from specification through fabrication, FAT, delivery, installation, and startup. Understand which decisions and long-lead packages drive the project schedule.
**Help Build It:** Serve as Plantible's engineering point of contact during construction. Coordinate RFIs, submittals, design clarifications, field changes, and vendor questions. Maintain strong onsite presence during active installation. Resolve conflicts between drawings, equipment, contractors, and requirements. Support quality reviews, mechanical completion, punch lists, system turnover, and documentation closeout.
**Make It Work:** Plan for commissioning and startup before construction is complete. Coordinate vendor startup requirements, FATs, SATs, commissioning, performance testing, and operator training. Work with Operations and Maintenance to ensure systems are documented, tested, safe, and ready to operate. Verify systems achieve required capacity, performance, quality, and reliability. Capture problems and lessons learned for future facilities.
You do not need to be the deepest expert in every unit operation, but you need enough technical depth to identify gaps, challenge assumptions, connect the right people, and turn a developing process into systems that can be procured, built, commissioned, and operated.
**Requirements:**
The posting encourages applications from candidates who may not meet all listed qualifications and states the company will consider candidates for other current or upcoming roles. Specific technical requirements were not fully provided in the excerpt, but the role clearly requires strong process engineering fundamentals, project management experience, vendor coordination skills, and familiarity with capital project execution in manufacturing or biotech environments.
