---
title: 'Metallurgist at Kunin Technologies'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/metallurgist-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-4eb5f8r86qq4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Metallurgist at Kunin Technologies

- **Company:** Kunin Technologies
- **Location:** Chattanooga, TN
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kunin/8e030bbb-824e-472d-98ad-09d738a4a94a

## Job description

## WHO WE ARE

Kunin Technologies is revolutionizing the critical mineral supply chain by implementing advanced separation systems with traditional unit operations to capture value from overlooked resources. Ore grades are falling globally, and conventional extraction leaves recoverable metal in material that mines and refineries write off as waste. Tailings, effluents, and legacy sites hold real value that existing separation technology can't reach economically. Utilizing Kunin Technologies' proprietary mass manufacturable nano-separation systems, significantly more value can be produced from each resource, reducing waste, and unlocking domestic critical mineral production. Kunin is developing metal recovery flowsheets and reprocessing facilities from operating refinery effluents, decades-old tailings stockpiles, and even centuries-old Superfund sites. Kunin is a team of process engineers, polymer scientists, and organic chemists with a 10k sq. ft. hydrometallurgical and organic synthesis lab in Chattanooga, TN. Kunin is pushing forward metal recovery projects across scandium, gallium, germanium, copper, cobalt, rhodium, and gold. To achieve metal abundance, humanity must bring separation science down its own Moore's Law: fix the idiot cost index for micro and nano scale separation materials. This requires mass manufacturing novel ion-exchange media form factors which previously struggled from high costs.

## WHAT YOU'LL LEAD

You run the metallurgical testwork that decides whether a Kunin project survives its next stage gate. Working under the Principal Metallurgist, you turn a feed sample and a question into a test program, execute it in Kunin's Chattanooga laboratory or at a partner laboratory, and report a result the engineering team can design from. This includes:

- Planning and executing bench-scale hydrometallurgical testwork: leaching, solid-liquid separation, ion exchange, solvent extraction, precipitation, and crystallization.
- Preparing and characterizing samples: sub-sampling, head assays, size distributions, and the chain of custody that keeps a result defensible.
- Closing mass balances on every test and flagging the ones that do not close before they reach a report.
- Operating and maintaining laboratory equipment: reactors, columns, filters, mixer-settlers, and the analytical instruments the program depends on.
- Writing test procedures, maintaining laboratory records, and producing the data packages behind stage-gate reports.
- Supporting pilot campaigns on site and at partner facilities, including shift coverage during continuous runs.

## WHO YOU ARE

- Bachelor's degree in metallurgical, chemical, or mineral processing engineering and 2 to 6 years of hydrometallurgical or mineral processing testwork.
- Experimentalist fluent in leach, ion exchange, and solvent extraction bench testing with careful control of pH, temperature, and reagent addition.
- Skilled in laboratory data handling: mass balances, recovery calculations, and clean spreadsheets or scripts that someone else can audit.
- Comfortable with analytical techniques (ICP, titration, XRD) and knows when a number should not be trusted.
- Excited about working hard to push projects farther, faster in an early-stage startup environment with extreme autonomy, opportunity, and high expectations.
- Team player who keeps the laboratory safe, the records complete, and the Principal Metallurgist informed.

## COMPENSATION

This role will pay $105,000 - $195,000, benefits, and equity.

## ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

- Must be willing to relocate to Chattanooga, TN and available to travel to partner sites and laboratories in the United States and Canada for sampling and pilot campaigns. Relocation support will be provided.
- Extended hours and weekends frequently required to support critical project milestones.
- Kunin will do whatever it can to secure work authorization for the right candidate.

Chattanooga is more beautiful than expected, and Tennessee has no income tax. "The Whole World Is Ion-Exchange And The Rest Are Merely Details!" Dr. Robert Kunin of Rohm and Haas, The Pioneer of the Ion-Exchange Industry, 1951

## About Kunin Technologies

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kunin Technologies develops modular ion-exchange equipment to recover critical minerals from U.S. mining waste streams, helping mines unlock byproduct metals.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Early-stage, pre-revenue)
- **Headquarters**: Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Daniel Rau (CEO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Critical mineral extraction, mining technology, industrial process engineering
- Target customers: U.S. mining operations (B2B, Industrial/Enterprise), particularly mines that produce copper, lithium, or other primary metals and want to recover secondary byproducts like gallium, germanium, scandium, rhenium, and vanadium
- Mission or purpose statement: “Bringing mining back to America” by recovering trillions of dollars in stranded critical minerals from existing mining waste

## Products & Services
- **Modular Ion-Exchange Skids**: Pre-assembled, prefabricated treatment trains that use proven ion-exchange resin technology (invented by the company’s namesake, Robert Kunin, during the Manhattan Project) to separate target metals from mining wastewater and tailings streams.
- **Byproduct Financing & Asset Ownership Model**: Kunin helps mine owners finance critical mineral byproduct assets, sharing upside from recovered metals that would otherwise be lost.
- **Multiphysics Digital Twins & Process Controls**: Automated optimization systems that maximize metal capture rates and speed of recovery for each specific mining operation.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (early-stage startup)
- **Key Metric**: Small team of ~2-6 employees (as of mid-2026); active hiring spree with 4 open positions
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Tied into Department of Energy projects; selected by the DOE Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation to restart domestic primary gallium recovery; based at Brickyard in Chattanooga
- **Growth Signals**: Selected for DOE critical minerals program; reports its technology can uplift mine revenue by 10–30% over 10 years; U.S. mining industry facing critical supply shortages due to Chinese export restrictions on gallium, germanium, and other metals — creating massive tailwind for its market

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proven Chemistry, Novel Form Factor**: Uses ion-exchange resin chemistry with decades of in-field operating experience — no new material science required. The innovation is in the modular form factor and automated process controls, which dramatically reduce cost.
- **Vertically Integrated**: Kunin is America’s only vertically integrated ion-exchange technology developer, covering design, manufacturing, deployment, and financing.
- **Strategic Positioning**: Headquarters in Chattanooga strategically near Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory — all hubs for engineering talent.
- **Massive Addressable Market**: Estimates over $3 trillion in stranded critical minerals across U.S. mining waste that are currently not recovered.

## Strategic Focus
- Moving from pilot-scale demonstration to full production and deployment across the United States
- Scaling manufacturing to apply a lithium-ion battery-style learning curve to skidded system costs
- Building automated process controls for optimized metal recovery at existing mine sites
- Helping restore U.S. competitiveness in critical mineral production amid geopolitical supply chain disruptions

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Mission**: Directly contribute to U.S. critical mineral independence, domestic manufacturing, and national security — with measurable environmental benefit by recovering metals from existing waste rather than new mining
- **Tiny Team, Huge Ownership**: Currently 2-6 people; new hires (titles include “Damn Good Engineer,” Senior Scientist, Hydrometallurgist, Mechanical Lead) will have outsized influence on technology and company trajectory
- **Engineering-First Culture**: Emphasis on chemical process engineering, mechanical design, and multiphysics simulation — building real hardware that goes into the ground
- **Location**: Chattanooga, Tennessee — lower cost of living with proximity to top engineering universities and DOE national labs
- **EY: Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Likely onsite/hybrid given the hardware and lab focus; careers page does not specify remote options
- **Backed by DOE**: Credibility from federal selection for critical mineral recovery projects
- **Growth Trajectory**: Active hiring spree signals company is scaling from R&D toward deployment — early-stage equity opportunity

## Sources
1. [kunin.tech](https://www.kunin.tech/)
2. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com/kunin](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kunin)
3. [Hypepotamus](https://hypepotamus.com/startup-news/kunin-technologies-critical-minerals-mining-waste/)
4. [LinkedIn - Kunin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kunin)

## Other roles at Kunin Technologies

- [VP of Manufacturing](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-manufacturing-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-krky86pgqk1e) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Controls Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/controls-engineer-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-gtcd05qbsryh) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Mechanical Engineer - Facilities](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-facilities-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-4311d8fth3vk) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Facilities Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/facilities-engineer-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-kngfhyk8e3nb) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Chemical Process Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/chemical-process-engineer-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-hfzfqwf7fcbv) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Summer Intern - Metallurgy and Chemistry](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-intern-metallurgy-and-chemistry-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-hp54hxchvhgf) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Summer Intern - Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-intern-engineering-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-9ph7kzpmmwez) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Summer Intern - Commercial](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-intern-commercial-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-z3qtgkr9cvfw) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Head of Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-finance-kunin-technologies-chattanooga-xf4jt96dx6w7) — Chattanooga, TN
- [Director of Government Relations](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-government-relations-kunin-technologies-washington-39361rcv1yfm) — Washington, DC