Senior Process Manager — Single-Crystal CVD Diamond Growth

Company: KK Exports

Location: Surat, India (on-site)

Job Type: Full-time, Senior level

Reports to: Senior Engineering Leadership

About the role

KK Exports is building a world-class single-crystal CVD diamond growth operation and is hiring a Senior Process Manager to own day-to-day reactor operations, material output, and process performance. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who thrives on the shop floor, takes personal responsibility for the single-crystal diamond coming out of the reactors, and wants a meaningful R&D; component in their week. You will translate growth specifications from senior engineers into reliable, repeatable, high-quality single-crystal production, and dedicate roughly a quarter of your time to development work that pushes the process forward.

Responsibilities

Process ownership (≈ 75%)

- Own single-crystal CVD diamond growth recipes, reactor operation, and run-to-run consistency

- Implement specifications and growth protocols defined by senior engineers, and drive them to repeatable production

- Take personal responsibility for crystal quality, growth rate, sector control, and process performance metrics

- Lead substrate preparation, seed handling, in-run monitoring, and post-growth inspection workflows

- Coordinate with maintenance, gas handling, and metrology teams to keep reactors in spec

- Diagnose excursions and lead root-cause analysis on defects, inclusions, twinning, color, and yield loss

- Maintain rigorous process documentation, run logs, and traceability for every stone produced





- Mentor and supervise process engineers, technicians, and operators

R&D; (≈ 25%)

- Design and execute development experiments: nitrogen/oxygen chemistry tuning, temperature and pressure regimes, seed selection and preparation, step-growth strategies, multi-cycle growth

- Collaborate with senior engineers on reactor design improvements and next-generation growth campaigns

- Characterize material (Raman, PL, FTIR, birefringence, UV-Vis, optical microscopy) and tie results back to process parameters

- Contribute to internal IP development and technical reporting

Required qualifications

- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Chemical Engineering, Materials Science / Materials Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering

- Minimum experience:

- 10+ years with a Bachelor’s degree, or

- 5+ years with a Master’s or PhD

- Demonstrated hands-on experience running production or pilot-scale process equipment (plasma, vacuum, thermal, or deposition systems)

- Strong grasp of process control fundamentals: DOE, SPC, root-cause analysis, yield management

- Comfortable on the shop floor — this is not a desk role

- Strong written and spoken English; able to communicate clearly with international engineering partners





- Willingness to be on-call for critical runs and to support extended hours during development campaigns

Strongly preferred

- Direct background in single-crystal CVD diamond growth (microwave plasma CVD)

- Master’s or PhD with a thesis in diamond, wide-bandgap single-crystal materials, or plasma processing

What success looks like in this role

- Reactors run on spec, with documented recipes and predictable yields of high-quality single-crystal diamond

- Clear ownership of material performance — crystal quality is traceable and improving quarter over quarter

- Junior engineers and operators are trained, capable, and accountable

- The R&D; pipeline produces real process improvements that make it into production

What we offer

- Senior technical leadership role in a fast-growing deep-hardware operation

- Direct involvement in scaling a single-crystal CVD diamond business from pilot to production

- Significant autonomy and ownership over the process

- Compensation commensurate with experience and degree level

- Collaboration with an international engineering team

How to apply

Submit your CV along with a brief technical summary (1–2 paragraphs) describing a single-crystal growth process (or comparable precision process) you owned end-to-end: what the specifications were, what went wrong at least once, and how you brought it under control. Publications, patents, or characterization data samples (suitably redacted) are welcome.

Pay: Up to ₹1,000,000.00 per month

Work Location: In person

📌 Senior Process Manager — Single-Crystal CVD Diamond Growth (India)
🏢 K K EXPORTS
📍 India