---
title: 'Production Line Technician at Sundrive'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/production-line-technician-sundrive-sydney-kq3735jeem1t'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Production Line Technician at Sundrive

- **Company:** Sundrive
- **Location:** Sydney, Australia
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/sundrivesolar/e7def3e8-775a-43cb-8451-188feb67fbc9

## Job description

About Us: Founded in 2015, SunDrive is one of Australia's most exciting start-ups, operating in one of the world's pioneering spaces – renewable energy technology. We are on a mission to unlock Solar's full potential by revolutionising how solar cells are made, to unlock new heights of efficiency, and sustainability. SunDrive is backed by Australia’s top venture capital firms (Blackbird, Main Sequence, Virescent, Grok), tech founders, and the Australian Government (CEFC, ARENA). About the Role: You will be part of a robust, agile, and dedicated team of 6 seasoned experts who bring a wealth of knowledge and passion to the Photovoltaics space. Reporting directly to our Head of Process Engineering, you’ll take on the exciting challenge of operating SunDrive’s production line, while collaborating closely with our Mechanical and Mechatronics engineering teams. Your contributions will go beyond the day-to-day as you conduct hands-on experiments, perform post-result analysis, and deep dive into the characterisation of solar cells, helping us to breakthrough and continuously improve our patented solar cell technology. This is an exciting and unique opportunity for an early career professional to gain invaluable experience and grow long term in the renewable energy sector.

Day to day responsibilities:

- Organise and prepare production runs to support safe, smooth and efficient operations.
- Operate and monitor equipment across both the laboratory and production line.
- Prepare, handle and safely manage materials and chemicals required for production. Maintain accurate chemical stock records and report low-stock or replenishment requirements in accordance with approved procedures, safety data sheets and site safety requirements.
- Perform routine characterisation and basic analysis using established procedures. Record results, compare against agreed criteria, and escalate unexpected results to the relevant engineer.
- Prepare and finalise experimental and production reports.
- Track, update and report production yield metrics for each run.
- Carry out basic maintenance, servicing and cleaning of production equipment and chemical systems within the scope of training and approved procedures.
- Perform routine chemical sampling and analysis in accordance with approved procedures and report results outside specified process tolerances.
- Maintain accurate production, quality and maintenance records.
- Collaborate with team members to maintain safe, efficient and effective laboratory and production operations.
- Comply with all workplace health and safety, quality, environmental and operational procedures.

## Preferred qualification

- Qualification in Photovoltaics Engineering, Renewable Energy Engineering, Chemistry or a related technical discipline
- Solar Cell laboratory or manufacturing experience
- A PV background, including an understanding of solar cell fundamentals and characterisation techniques, would be advantageous.
- Exposure to experimental reporting and data analysis.
- Ability to design, execute and analyse large processing experiments (100+ sample size).

## About Sundrive

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: SunDrive is an Australian solar technology company that has developed a breakthrough electrochemical process to replace silver with copper in solar cell manufacturing, significantly reducing costs while improving efficiency.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Multiple funding rounds completed)
- **Headquarters**: Sydney (Kurnell/Kirrawee), New South Wales, Australia
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Vince Allen (Co-founder) — the company grew from a small PhD project in a garage.

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Renewable Energy / Solar Technology
- **Target Customers**: B2B — solar cell manufacturers, equipment partners, and large-scale energy project developers (e.g., AGL).
- **Mission/Purpose**: To reduce the cost of high-efficiency solar cells while enhancing their performance and sustainability by utilizing abundant materials like copper instead of scarce silver.

## Products & Services
- **Copper Plating Technology**: A proprietary, patented manufacturing process that replaces the traditional silver electrode in solar cells with deposited copper. This creates thinner metal lines that allow more light into the cell, increasing electricity generation and significantly reducing material costs.
- **Automation & Tooling**: Full-stack capability including tooling design, software, and automation systems to integrate the copper plating process into existing high-volume solar cell production lines.
- **Full-Stack Engineering Capability**: Material science (chemistry for photoresist, pretreatment, plating), process development (analytical models and simulation), and equipment design (mechatronics, software, mechanical integration).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (Private company).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of **$9.8M USD** (estimated) | Total disclosed funding exceeds **$55M USD** across grants and equity rounds, led by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Blackbird Ventures, and Main Sequence Ventures.
- **Notable Investors & Partners**: Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Virescent Ventures, AGL Energy, Capral Aluminium, Suzhou Maxwell Technologies (global equipment manufacturer), Vistar (equipment manufacturer).
- **Growth Signals**: Secured transformational funding from ARENA in 2025. Completed a commercial demonstration tool and began customer demos. Partnered with Chinese firms for rapid scale-up of HJT (Heterojunction) solar cells. Workforce distributed across Australia, Mexico, and the USA.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary IP**: Breakthrough copper plating chemistry and process that solves the solar industry's biggest upcoming problem—silver scarcity (solar already consumes >30% of global industrial silver).
- **Efficiency Gains**: Their process creates finer grid lines than traditional screen-printing, allowing more light to reach the cell and generating more electricity.
- **Full-Stack Integration**: Unlike single-point solution providers, SunDrive designs the chemistry, the process, and the hardware, offering clients a turn-key manufacturing solution.
- **Cost & Sustainability**: Copper is significantly cheaper and more abundant than silver, creating a powerful cost-reduction path for manufacturers.

## Strategic Focus
- **Commercial Scale-Up**: Moving from a development company to a commercial production partner. They are actively demonstrating their demo tool to customers and partnering with global equipment manufacturers (Maxwell, Vistar) to accelerate deployment.
- **Supply Chain Localization**: Partnered with Capral Aluminium in Australia to build a domestic solar PV supply chain.
- **Targeting HJT (Heterojunction) Cells**: Explicitly partnering with Chinese manufacturers to integrate copper plating into the next generation of high-efficiency HJT cell production lines.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Strong emphasis on "One team, human first" — acting with empathy, care, and respect. The founders value potential over experience. Described as a "team of doers" with a focus on real-world impact.
- **Work Model**: On-site roles at the Sydney facility (Kurnell/Kirrawee). Hands-on hardware and lab work is central to the role.
- **Engineering Focus**: Deep technical work spanning chemistry, mechatronics, software, and hardware. Engineers own full projects—from prototype to production deployment.
- **Impact**: Work directly on solving one of the most critical problems in global solar energy (silver scarcity) with technology that has the potential to be deployed at a gigawatt-scale globally.
- **Perks**: Team celebrations, competitive ping-pong, and a tight-knit team environment. 41 total employees, offering significant ownership and visibility.

## Sources
1. [sundrivesolar.com](https://www.sundrivesolar.com/)
2. [sundrivesolar.com/lifeatsundrive](https://www.sundrivesolar.com/lifesatsundrive)
3. [craft.co/sundrive-solar](https://craft.co/sundrive-solar)
4. [linkedin.com/company/sundrivesolar](https://linkedin.com/company/sundrivesolar)
5. [jobs.lever.co/sundrivesolar](https://jobs.lever.co/sundrivesolar)
6. [pv-tech.org](https://www.pv-tech.org)
7. [pv-magazine.com](https://www.pv-magazine.com)

## Other roles at Sundrive

- [Expression of Interest](https://feeny.ai/job/expression-of-interest-sundrive-sydney-7zx4qxx0s8bn) — Sydney, Australia