About Us

Alta is reinventing how the world sources critical minerals — using protein-based chemistry to extract rare earth elements and other essential materials from challenging feedstocks with unmatched selectivity. By dramatically reducing the cost and environmental impact of mineral separation, Alta is making it possible to unlock new sources of supply for 21st-century technologies. As global demand accelerates, securing these materials has become one of the most urgent challenges facing U.S. competitiveness and national security. Backed by top investors and government partners, Alta is growing fast and hiring mission-driven scientists and engineers to help us scale our platform and transform the future of mining.

How we work

Speed is part of our DNA. We’re building first-of-a-kind technology and facilities, which means the path isn’t always mapped. We’re comfortable with ambiguity: making sound, timely decisions guided by clear priorities, adapting quickly as we learn, and keeping a relentless focus on moving our business forward. We commit to fixed milestones on compressed timelines and hold ourselves accountable without compromising on safety or rigor.

Location: Boulder, CO ·

Reports To: Principal Scientist / Group Lead — Adsorbent Chemistry

Role Summary

You’ll be joining a small R&D team working on the resins and adsorbents at the center of Alta’s separation process. This role establishes in-house resin synthesis and functionalization capabilities, develops analytical methods to characterize resin properties and performance, and drives iterative improvements in adsorbent materials to meet process performance, reproducibility, and scale-up requirements.

Key Technical Responsibilities

Resin Synthesis & Functionalization: Develop and implement in-house methods for porous resin synthesis, surface functionalization, and ligand attachment to produce adsorbents with defined chemical and physical properties.
Resin Characterization: Develop and qualify analytical methods for resin composition, functional group density, ligand loading, porosity, and particle properties — and know the limits of each method well enough to say when a result should not be trusted.
Performance Evaluation: Connect those material properties to process outcomes — protein immobilization, adsorption capacity, selectivity, stability, and separation performance — working alongside our protein chemistry and process engineering teams.
Process Development: Establish reproducible synthesis and functionalization workflows at the bench, optimize reaction conditions, and identify the critical process parameters that govern resin quality.
Tech Transfer: Translate those workflows into process specifications that let others produce the same resin at larger scale, and support integration into Alta’s adsorbent manufacturing workflows.

This is a bench-heavy role; expect roughly 70% hands-on laboratory work.

Communication and Documentation

Maintain rigorous experimental records, author SOPs and test methods, and analyze and interpret data.
Communicate results, risks, and recommendations clearly to cross-functional R&D and process engineering teams, to executives, and to external stakeholders.
Plan, document, and execute detailed experiments for projects related to sorbent synthesis and characterization, including troubleshooting and identifying next steps.

Required Qualifications

B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in chemical engineering, polymer science and engineering, materials science, chemistry, or a closely related field, with hands-on laboratory experience working with porous materials, M.S. or Ph.D. highly preferred
B.S.: 5–7+ years
M.S.: 3–5+ years
Ph.D.: 2+ years
Hands-on experience synthesizing porous polymer or inorganic materials — you can explain which formulation and process variables you changed and how the pore structure responded.
Working command of at least two porosity or particle characterization techniques, such as N₂/Ar physisorption (BET, BJH or DFT pore size distributions), mercury intrusion porosimetry, inverse size-exclusion chromatography, SEM, or laser diffraction particle sizing.