---
title: 'Controls Engineer at Red Metals'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/controls-engineer-red-metals-charleston-275ycytdbgvg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-31'
---

# Controls Engineer at Red Metals

- **Company:** Red Metals
- **Location:** Charleston, SC
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/redmetals/6fc6bb58-af1a-41bf-afa8-abbb44907bbd

## Job description

Controls Engineer North Charleston, South Carolina Onsite

## About Red Metals

Red Metals is rethinking the domestic copper supply chain at a pivotal moment in American industry. U.S. demand already exceeds domestic supply, and the gap is widening as grid modernization, the energy transition, and buildout of AI infrastructure accelerate. We are building a new model for this critical industrial layer in the United States. Conventional refining moves copper through concentrate, matte, anode, and cathode before it becomes rod. We go straight from scrap to rod in one facility, using our integrated flowsheet that brings together shredders, mills, physical AI, and molten metal chemistry. We are building our first production line in North Charleston, South Carolina: a $70M investment in the future of American-made copper.

## The Role

We are looking for a Controls Engineer to design and build the automation infrastructure that runs our first scrap-to-rod production line. Our control systems will be a hybrid between what we build from the ground up and automation skids packaged with our equipment. Over time, we will iterate on all automation in the plant, vendor systems included, to build our own approach to copper processing. You will join our controls team and share ownership of the design, commissioning, and continuous improvement of these systems. Our controls team has a wide-ranging scope, covering electrical, instrumentation, and software domains. This role suits engineers who want to learn fast and wear many hats. As a team, we’ll work to innovate in both copper manufacturing and industrial automation.

## What You’ll Do

- Design and architect the plant’s controls infrastructure, from the sensor level up to the data layer for process, equipment, and quality data
- Develop controls logic for equipment across the line, from heavy shredding to molten metal, with code review, simulation, and structured testing before it reaches the floor
- Build on our Siemens and Ignition stack, and help shape how we use it as the plant grows
- Lead commissioning of in-house and vendor systems, from I/O checkout through loop tuning and production ramp-up
- Design safety systems across the plant, from machine safety in copper liberation to process interlocks in molten metal operations
- Write the controls standards that every line will run on, including our architecture, code structure, and documentation
- Optimize our machine vision and AI controls systems and expand their capabilities with sensor fusion
- Build internal tooling and automation that reduce manual work and speed up our troubleshooting and analysis
- Specify and integrate sensors and instrumentation to provide real-time measurement of process conditions and product quality

Red Metals Non-Negotiables

- Bias for Action We move fast. Speed beats polish. We use every tool, especially AI, to accelerate decisions, execution, and learning.
- Grit We do hard things because they matter. We keep pushing when others quit.
- Ownership We own outcomes, not tasks. We see problems, fix them, and follow through across functions.
- Signal We cut through noise. We communicate clearly and directly so decisions are fast and execution stays sharp.
- Craft We take pride in our work. Quality, care, and precision are the standard.

## What We’re Looking For

- Degree in Electrical Engineering, Controls Engineering, Chemical Engineering or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience demonstrating controls engineering capability
- 3+ years of experience in controls or instrumentation engineering
- Strong fundamentals in control systems, instrumentation, and electrical systems
- Proven ability to build and run real-world control systems, from concept to production
- Hands-on experience with PLCs and industrial control environments
- Experience working with real process data, including data collection, analysis, and application to system performance improvement
- Comfortable writing code and building tooling beyond ladder logic (Python or similar)
- Comfortable working on the plant floor in an industrial environment
- Ability to operate with incomplete information and make sound decisions quickly

Strong Pluses:

- Background in metals, recycling, mining, or heavy industry
- Experience commissioning and scaling first-of-a-kind or non-standard systems
- Experience building data pipelines, monitoring, and internal tools for industrial environments
- Experience applying machine learning or AI tools to process optimization
- Startup or early-stage experience

## Why Red Metals

- Build a company from zero, not optimize an existing system
- Direct ownership of critical process and operational decisions
- Work on a problem that matters: rebuilding U.S. industrial capacity
- Small team, high trust, no bureaucracy

Location This role is based in North Charleston, South Carolina and requires on-site work.

## About Red Metals

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Red Metals is building a new domestic supply chain for finished copper products by converting copper feedstocks directly into high-conductivity copper rod through an integrated refining and manufacturing process.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – $10M raised)
- **Headquarters**: Waterbury, Connecticut, United States / First production facility in Charleston, South Carolina
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (recent startup, announced seed round in June 2026)
- **Founders**: Jackson Switzer

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Copper refining and manufacturing (metals, advanced manufacturing)
- **Target customers**: B2B – data centers, grid modernization, electrification, defense, wire & cable manufacturers
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Reshoring American copper – building the supply chain for what’s next.” – delivering high-conductivity copper rod domestically with dramatically shorter lead times and lower environmental impact.

## Products & Services
- **High-Conductivity Copper Rod**: The company’s first commercial product – the industry-standard input used in wire, magnet wire, and other electrical applications. Produced via a single continuous operation from domestic copper feedstocks (initially scrap), reducing the typical multi-step, multi-country refining chain to days instead of months.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $10 million (Seed round, announced June 4, 2026)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Gigascale Capital (lead), Future Ventures, MCJ, and JB Straubel (founder and CEO of Redwood Materials, co-founder of Tesla). Also secured economic incentives from South Carolina and Charleston County.
- **Growth Signals**: Building a $70 million facility in Charleston, SC (42,000 sq ft), expected to create at least 45 jobs with operations online in Q4 2026. Tackling a U.S. refined copper supply gap projected to exceed 2.5M metric tons annually by 2035.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Integrated single-continuous process** that turns feedstocks directly into finished products, eliminating intermediate steps (concentrate, matte, anode, cathode, rod) – reducing lead times, working capital, energy intensity, and emissions.
- **Feedstock-flexible** – initially focused on domestic copper scrap, making the process commercially viable without subsidies.
- **Domestic supply chain security** – no port delays, no year-long lead times; built for reliability, speed, and control.
- **Backed by top-tier deep-tech and industrial investors** with a rare combination of process innovation, operational execution, and supply chain expertise.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priority**: Launch the first production facility in Charleston, SC, scale the integrated refining process, and prove the economics at commercial scale.
- **Medium‑term direction**: Expand capacity to support accelerating U.S. demand from data centers, grid modernization, electrification, and defense – aiming to capture a meaningful share of the domestic market ($45B+ by 2035).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Technical, execution-oriented team with backgrounds from Redwood Materials, Boeing, Albemarle, BASF, and other industrial leaders. The company values hands-on work, speed, and staying close to the product.
- **Location**: First facility in North Charleston, SC; company HQ in Waterbury, CT. The team is small (3 employees according to LinkedIn), so early hires will have outsized impact.
- **Notable perks/culture**: Opportunity to help rebuild America’s industrial base and work on a mission-critical supply chain problem. The company is actively hiring engineers, operators, and “entrepreneurial builders” – see [jobs.ashbyhq.com/redmetals](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/redmetals).

## Sources
1. [redmetals.com](https://www.redmetals.com/) – Company homepage
2. [redmetals.com/announcement](https://redmetals.com/announcement) – Seed funding press release
3. [linkedin.com/company/redmetals](https://www.linkedin.com/company/redmetals) – Company LinkedIn profile
4. [governor.sc.gov](https://governor.sc.gov/news/2026-06/red-metals-establishes-first-copper-manufacturing-operation-charleston-county) – South Carolina governor’s announcement of Charleston facility
5. [miningweekly.com](https://www.miningweekly.com/article/tesla-co-founder-backed-copper-maker-red-metals-secures-seed-funding-for-us-refining-plant-2026-06-05) – Mining Weekly article on seed round

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