About the job

Role: Metallurgical Engineer - High-Temperature Materials & Coatings

About Manastu

Manastu Space is a Space Safety and Logistics company focused on making space safe, sustainable, and accessible. We develop technologies to address critical challenges such as space debris mitigation and green propulsion, enabling safer satellite operations, and long-term sustainability of the space ecosystem.

Our work sits at the intersection of advanced engineering, applied research, and mission-critical systems, requiring deep technical capability and long-term thinking.

Website: https://www.manastuspace.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manastu-space/

Email: [email protected]

About the Role

We are looking for a Metallurgical Engineer to lead the development of high-temperature materials and protective coatings for our green monopropellant thruster. The hot section of the engine runs in a severe, chemically aggressive gas environment, and engine life is largely decided by how well its materials survive it. This is a hands-on research and development role: you will define the candidates, develop the coating formulation and process, build the test capability needed to evaluate them, carry the chosen solution through to qualified hardware, and own the material specification that design, manufacturing and test work to.

One note on the environment. Our exhaust is predominantly superheated steam rather than dry air. Steam degrades high-temperature materials by mechanisms that conventional air-oxidation testing does not capture, so experience with steam, water-vapour or hydrothermal environments is highly valued here — including from adjacent industries such as power generation, nuclear steam systems or ceramic-matrix-composite programmes. If your high-temperature experience is from dry air, we would still like to hear from you, provided you understand why the distinction matters.

Key Responsibilities

Materials and coating development

- Identify, screen and down-select high-temperature materials and protective coatings for the thruster nozzle, combustion chamber, liner and catalyst bed hardware.
- Develop coating formulations and application processes — aluminising, PVD, CVD, plasma or thermal spray, slurry and sol-gel — into repeatable, documented procedures.
- Select and qualify alloys for structural and pressure-bearing components, and generate the temperature-dependent material data the design team needs for structural and thermal analysis.

High-temperature material selection

- Evaluate and select superalloys, refractory metals and alloys, and ceramic or ceramic-matrix-composite candidates for hot-section hardware — screened on temperature capability, oxidation and steam resistance, thermal expansion match and manufacturability.
- Assess coating–substrate compatibility, including interdiffusion, thermal expansion mismatch and phase stability across the expected service envelope.
- Maintain a documented trade-off basis for each material selection so that later design or duty-cycle changes can be re-assessed quickly.





Testing and evaluation

- Design and run experiments covering oxidation, steam and hydrothermal degradation, erosion, thermal cycling, creep and mechanical performance at temperature.
- Establish the characterization protocol for coated and uncoated components and build the correlation between measured material properties and in-service behavior.
- Build and validate predictive models of material oxidation, steam attack and erosion — recession and mass-change kinetics, coating consumption and spallation life — and use them to extrapolate coupon data to component life and duty cycle.
- Specify, commission and validate new laboratory and test-rig capability, including instrumentation and measurement uncertainty. Some of this does not exist in-house yet, and you will build it.

Manufacturing and integration

- Ensure coating application does not compromise component dimensions, surface finish or performance, and agree with the machining and coating sequence with design and manufacturing.
- Support welding and joining development, including weld procedure qualification and non-destructive inspection of pressure-bearing hardware.
- Support hot-fire and component test campaigns with pre- and post-test inspection, sectioning and metallography, and carry out root cause analysis and FMECA on tested hardware.

Documentation, suppliers and team

- Own the material and coating specifications as a controlled document and maintain material traceability from supplier certification through to incoming inspection of flight hardware.
- Identify, qualify and manage coating vendors, external laboratories, and research partners.
- Write clear technical reports, keep accurate experimental records, and mentor junior engineers and technicians.

Educational Qualifications

- M.Tech / M.E. / M.Sc. (Engg.) or Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, or Physical Metallurgy.
- Also considered: Ceramic Engineering, Surface Engineering, Corrosion Science and Engineering, Materials Chemistry, or Applied Physics with a materials specialisation.
- A Mechanical or Chemical Engineering background will be considered only where the postgraduate research and subsequent work has been squarely in high-temperature materials, coatings or surface engineering.

An undergraduate degree in Metallurgical Engineering, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Ceramic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering is expected alongside the above.

Experience Required

- Ph.D. route — no minimum industry experience. A doctorate on high-temperature coatings, oxidation,



surface degradation or a closely related topic already represents several years of the work this role does daily. Recent and about-to-submit graduates are encouraged to apply.
- Master’s route — around 3 years, as a guideline rather than a cut-off. Developing high-temperature materials or protective coatings for components in oxidising or otherwise aggressive service. A strongly relevant postgraduate thesis in surface engineering, coatings or high-temperature materials, combined with hands-on deposition and characterisation work, will offset a shorter track record.
- For both routes: you can design an experimental programme yourself — deciding what to measure, what not to measure, and why, and then defending that choice.
- Also for both routes: evidence that you have carried a material or coating from an idea through to a physical component that was made, inspected and tested. Coupons and publications alone are not enough.

What We Do Not Expect You To Arrive With We would rather be explicit than have strong candidates screen themselves out.

- Weld procedure qualification, non-destructive inspection interpretation, material traceability practice and supplier qualification. Valuable if you have them; we will bring in support and expect you to learn them here if you do not.
- Aerospace or space-sector experience, or familiarity with space materials and process standards. Power generation, nuclear, oil and gas, automotive, defence and heavy engineering are all relevant if the materials problem was comparable.
- Experience with our specific propellant. Very few people outside a handful of organisations have it.

Required Technical Skills

- Solid grounding in high-temperature degradation mechanisms — oxidation, steam and water-vapour attack, corrosion, erosion, creep, thermal fatigue and coating spallation.
- Hands-on capability in at least two coating routes from: aluminising or pack cementation, PVD, CVD, plasma or thermal spray, slurry or sol-gel.
- Materials characterisation: SEM, EDS, XRD phase analysis, optical microscopy, and metallographic preparation and cross-sectional examination.
- Coating evaluation: thickness, porosity and surface roughness measurement, adhesion testing, microhardness and thermal cycling.
- Mechanical and thermal testing at elevated temperature, and the ability to derive usable design data from scattered results.
- Design of experiments and sound statistical treatment of data.
- Familiarity with relevant test and material standards (ASTM, ISO, and ideally ECSS or equivalent aerospace materials and process standards).
- XRD analysis software such as X’Pert HighScore or FullProf, plus Origin and ImageJ. Basic scripting for data reduction is a plus.

Preferred Skills

- Environmental barrier coatings, or exposure testing in steam, water-vapour or hydrothermal rigs.
- Concentrated hydrogen peroxide, monopropellants or other strong oxidisers, including safe handling practice.
- Chemical compatibility testing of wetted materials with propellants or other aggressive fluids, and the associated surface cleaning and passivation procedures.

📌 Metallurgical Engineer (Mumbai)
🏢 Manastu Space
📍 Mumbai