About Manastu Manastu Space is a Space Safety and Logistics company focused on making space protected, 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] Role Objective Every metal part that flies on a Manastu vehicle is a material choice, and today nobody owns that choice. You will. You will say whether the materials we fly now are the right ones, what is wrong with them and what should replace them, choose or design the material for every new part against the mission requirement, and prove how each one behaves in our hydrogen peroxide green monopropellant. This is an accountable role, not an advisory one. No material enters flight hardware without your assessment and your specification sheet, and you answer for that judgement being right. You are also accountable for the metallurgy you give other people: compatibility, welding, characterisation and high temperature work take their material judgement from you. Other people sign the purchase, the weld and the release. The metallurgy behind their decision is yours, written down and signed. Role Overview We need a Physical Metallurgist in Navi Mumbai with a PhD in physical metallurgy, materials science and engineering or a closely related area, and 7 to 10 years of experience after it. This is a hands-on scientist post at the bench, not a desk, and it is one person owning a whole subject. You will start with what we fly today: aluminium alloys, austenitic stainless steels and some superalloys. You will work out what each one is doing, what is wrong with it and what should change. From there you take the requirement from design and from the mission, choose or design the material, propose it with the evidence behind it, and specify the changes our propellant demands. Compatibility is the centre of this work. The same alloy can give results an order of magnitude apart depending on whether the surface is machined, polished or anodised. Explaining that, and turning it into a rule we can design to, is yours. With the compatibility group you will link what the metal looks like inside to how it behaves in our propellant, and make that link the basis of the next material choice. You will work at the bench yourself and interpret advanced characterisation: electron microscopy, diffraction and microanalysis. You will take a material from first evidence in the laboratory, through validation in a relevant environment, to qualification in the actual part and process, and say at any point what readiness it has reached and what is still missing.

Key Responsibilities
• Know what we fly today and say whether it is right. For every material in flight hardware, including the parts that run hot and the valve parts whose magnetic properties matter: why it was chosen, what the mission asks of it, how it behaves in propellant, what is wrong with it, and what should change. Work each one out from first principles, not from habit.
• Own physical metallurgy for the department: grain size, phases, defects and alloying, and what second phases and intermetallics do in surface treatment, in corrosion and in the propellant.
• Own material selection,



and every future alloy choice: one we develop, one taken off the shelf, or a change of grade or temper in a material we already use. Take the requirement from design: loads, temperature, pressure, geometry, mass, cost and lead time. Screen and rank the candidates, choose the material and its condition, and issue the specification.
• Develop and design materials. Where no standard material fits, design a new alloy or modify an existing one: the elements and the amounts, the processing route and the condition or temper, and what each change is meant to do.
• Propose nothing without working out suitability from first principles: whether it meets the mission requirement, how it behaves in our propellant, what is not yet known, and what must be proved. Write it down and sign it.
• Write and own the material specification sheet that goes with every suggestion and every purchase. State the technology readiness level (TRL) of every material you propose or clear, and what evidence is still needed to raise it.
• Work with the compatibility group and name the metallurgical factors that decide compatibility, working through them one by one: composition and alloying, second phases and intermetallics, grain size and grain boundaries, surface condition and treatment, cold work, and heat treatment condition. Write what a material must satisfy to be called compatible with our propellant: the properties, the limits, the test and the evidence needed.
• Say what each surface treatment does to the material and to its behaviour in propellant: machining, pickling, passivation, anodising and electropolishing. Control what machining, forming and cold work leave behind: the worked layer, residual stress, distortion and roughness.
• Lead the metallurgical side of every failure investigation in the cell, with the quality lead and the domain owner: the cause in the structure, and the change that stops it returning.
• Prepare and read sections yourself, run hardness, conductivity and mechanical tests and read them against the structure, and specify and interpret electron microscopy, diffraction and microanalysis in depth.
• Set the metallurgical acceptance requirement, and check every incoming lot against the specification sheet rather than against the certificate.
• Specify heat treatment for our alloys and parts, with limits and the evidence behind them. Run it on our own furnace where we have one, and specify, qualify and audit the vendor where we do not.
• Be the metallurgist the cell comes to. Compatibility, welding, characterisation and high temperature work take the metallurgy from you, including what the heat affected zone has become after welding and the post-weld condition, and you are accountable for the advice you give them as much as for your own work.
• Keep a file for every material so a decision can be repeated and audited, train the cell to read a metallurgical result, and hold a material or a part back when the evidence does not support it. Experience & Background
• A PhD in physical metallurgy, materials science and engineering, metallurgical engineering or a closely related area.




• 7 to 10 years of experience after the PhD in physical metallurgy, materials engineering, alloy development or failure investigation. Industrial or national laboratory experience is preferred over purely academic work.
• Physical metallurgy in depth: phases and transformations, precipitation hardening and over-ageing, recrystallisation and grain growth, strengthening mechanisms, and the second phases, intermetallics and defect structures that result.
• Alloying: what each element does in the metal, what it costs elsewhere, and how a composition is put together to get a property.
• Aluminium alloys and austenitic stainless steels are a must. Understanding of high temperature behaviour, nickel based superalloys and refractory metals, and of the soft magnetic alloys used in valves, is an advantage.
• Material selection against a stated requirement: screening and ranking candidates, trading properties against cost, lead time and manufacturability, working with designers, and issuing the specification that follows.
• Alloy development: has designed a new alloy or modified an existing one, and can say what each change was meant to do and whether it worked.
• Relating structure and surface condition to how a material behaves in service, so the next choice can be made on structure rather than on another test.
• What each process and surface treatment do to a material: machining, pickling, passivation, anodising and electropolishing, and the worked layer, roughness and residual stress each one leaves.
• Metallography as a working tool, not a service someone else provides: prepares and reads sections, measures grain size and rates inclusions to a recognised standard.
• Fractography and failure investigation, with electron microscopy and diffraction.
• Heat treatment in practice: solution treatment, quench, age, anneal and stress relief; furnace and thermocouple control, quench delay and load effects; and writing a specification a vendor can be held to.
• Incoming material acceptance: certificates, lot traceability, and the verification testing that catches a material that is not what the paperwork says.
• Relevant backgrounds include research institutes and national laboratories, aerospace and launch vehicle materials groups, forging, rolling and heat treatment industry, and university metallurgy departments. Experience with hydrogen peroxide or other oxidiser service is an advantage, but it is not necessary.
• A recognised certification or formal training in metallography, failure analysis or materials testing is preferred. Ideal Candidate Profile
• A metallurgist first, and accountable rather than advisory: answers for whether a material is fit to fly, gives no opinion without a section, and will not accept a material on a certificate alone.
• Says plainly what is wrong with a material we already use and what should replace it, instead of defending what is already there.
• Chooses or designs a material against a requirement, defends the choice from the metallurgy, and is straight about the trade-offs it forces.
• Takes a failure to a cause in the metal and proves the change stopped it, instead of writing a report and moving on.
• Reports a bad result early, and holds a material or a part back when the evidence does not support it.

What we offer
Competitive compensation Comprehensive health insurance High ownership and visibility, with direct access to leadership Support for learning, conferences, and research exposure Subsidised lunch plan

📌 Physical Metallurgist (Navi Mumbai)
🏢 Manastu Space
📍 Navi Mumbai