Description
About the role

We are seeking a hands-on, mechanically-minded Scale-up Technologist to take our midstream manufacturing process from pilot-scale to full production.

Here's the problem. We rear fruit flies at industrial scale and harvest frozen larval biomass. Midstream processing turns that biomass into a clarified lysate: homogenize, extract the protein, clarify the result. In order to meet our near-term manufacturing demands, our biomass processing technology stack needs to be roughly ten times faster by next year than it is today. Our current scaled-up lab methods will not get us there.

We are in the middle of selecting the industrial equipment that will get us there. Decanter centrifugation, filter pressing, high-shear homogenization, continuous flocculation and depth filtration are all in play. Your job starts where the purchase order ends. You will commission that equipment, debug it against the genuinely difficult material we actually run, climb the rate curve, and build the process and documentation that makes it repeatable.

One thing to understand about the shape of this work: midstream today runs as a small number of large production campaigns rather than continuous daily manufacturing. That means long stretches of building, testing and improving, punctuated by high-stakes runs where everything has to work the first time, from a cold start, with no daily rhythm to fall back on. For the right person, that's the good version of this job-real time to fix things properly, and a clear moment of truth to fix them for.

This is not a role where you inherit a working line and maintain it. You will inherit machines, a stubborn feedstock, a hard deadline, and a lot of latitude.

Reporting to our VP of Technical Operations, Erik, you'll work most closely with Brian, our Senior Engineer, and Muhammad, who leads downstream process development. You will train the operators who run the equipment during campaigns, and you'll be the technical authority they come to when something doesn't behave. We are a small team by design: there is no maintenance department to escalate to, no project manager to write your schedule, and no set of as-built drawings waiting for you. If that sounds like an obstacle, this isn't your role. If it sounds like freedom, keep reading.

We do not need you to be a biologist. We have those. We need someone who has moved solids and liquids at industrial rates and knows what actually breaks.

This role will own

Commissioning and startup

• Take delivery of new extraction and clarification equipment, run installation and site acceptance, and get it producing on real material-not water trials.
• Design and execute the shakedown testing that tells us whether the equipment does what the vendor said it does, and escalate loudly and early when it doesn't.
• Own the vendor relationship through startup: hold them to their performance claims, and get their application specialists working your problem.

Rate and yield

• Drive midstream throughput by roughly ten-fold, while holding product quality and protein yield.
• Run structured optimization rather than trial and error: mass balance the process, find where yield and time are actually being lost, and fix things in priority order.
• Own the numbers. Every rate claim we make to a customer traces back to run data you stand behind.

Process, training and reliability

• Design the physical workflow and material flow of the midstream floor: staging, thaw, transfer, waste handling, CIP and turnaround between batches.
• Write the SOPs, run records and troubleshooting guides, then train the operators who execute them during campaigns.
• Make campaigns start cold and go right: readiness checks, dry runs, spares on hand, and the pre-flight discipline that keeps a two-week gap from turning into a lost run.
• Keep equipment running: preventive maintenance, spares strategy, and the hands-on repairs that a small company does itself.

The handoff to purification

• Define and hold the clarified lysate specification our downstream team depends on-turbidity, particulate load, and the other properties that determine whether purification works or fouls.
• Work with downstream process development to characterize how changes upstream of them ripple through filter sizing, resin performance and consumable cost.

Documentation that lasts

• Build process documentation as you go, structured to become the foundation of a formal quality management system rather than something we rebuild later. We're driving toward ISO 13485, and our Head of Quality will guide you on what that requires.

About you

This role is about industrial reality. The technology is unusual; the unit operations are not. If you have taken a solid-liquid separation or extraction process from pilot to production and made the rate, we want to talk to you.

What we need you to have done before

• Production-scale solid-liquid separation. Decanter or disc-stack centrifugation, filter or belt pressing, flocculation, depth filtration-at real industrial rates, not benchtop.
• Personally taken a process from pilot to production. You've been the one on the floor at 2am during a rate trial, not the one who wrote the specification and handed it to a contractor.
• Commissioning and startup. Installation, site acceptance testing, shakedown, and the long unglamorous climb from "it runs" to "it runs at rate, every time."
• Hands-on mechanical ability. You read P&IDs, you'll rebuild a pump, you know what to ask a fabrication shop for, and you own tools.
• Quantitative process work. Mass balances, yield accounting, and structured optimization. You reach for data before intuition.
• Comfort without infrastructure. You've worked somewhere the resources were thin and you built what you needed.
• Documentation discipline. You write procedures people can actually follow, and you record what happened even when nobody is checking.

Where you might be coming from

Food and agricultural processing, canola or oilseed crush, rendering, brewing and distilling, protein processing, pulp and paper, water and wastewater treatment, mining or minerals processing, cannabis processing, or bioprocessing and biotech manufacturing. Formal training in chemical, mechanical or process engineering, or an equivalent technologist background plus a career of doing it. Anywhere from 5+ years of relevant experience, though we care far more about what you've shipped than what's on your CV.

Bonus points (nice-to-haves)

• High-shear homogenization or mechanical cell disruption at scale.
• Clean-in-place and hygienic or food-grade equipment design.
• Campaign or batch manufacturing experience, where the process has to work correctly from a cold start rather than settling into a daily rhythm.
• Process automation, PLC/SCADA, or instrumentation work-the long-term future of our facility is more automated than its present.
• Experience working inside a formal quality system (ISO 13485, ISO 9001, HACCP, SQF, GMP).
• Protein extraction, precipitation, or filtration chemistry.
• Having been the person everyone finds when something is broken, and liking it.

Your future (with Future Fields)

This roadmap outlines the impact you'll make as you grow with us. We'll use this as a guide for your first year, knowing that in a fast-paced environment, we'll adapt and evolve these goals together.

Within 1 month, you will:

• Develop a working understanding of our technology, terminology and end-to-end operating process, from strain development and insect rearing through midstream processing, purification, testing and customer delivery.
• Learn the current midstream process by running it yourself alongside the team, and form your own view of where the real constraints are rather than inheriting ours.
• Review the equipment selections in progress or already made, the vendor trial data behind them, and give the VP of Technical Operations a frank assessment of the risks you see. We want to hear it early, and we want to hear it even if it's unwelcome.
• Build working relationships across upstream processing, downstream processing, quality and facilities, and meet the operators you'll be training.

Within 3 months, you will:

• Own commissioning of the new midstream equipment: installation, site acceptance and first runs on real biomass, with documented performance against what the vendor promised.
• Establish a reliable baseline of midstream performance, with a defensible measurement of throughput, protein yield and clarified lysate quality that everyone in the company trusts and uses.
• Have a rate improvement plan with a ranked list of constraints, the experiments or modifications that address each one, and honest estimates of what each is worth.
• Have first-draft SOPs and run records in place for the new process.

Within 6 months, you will:

• Have midstream throughput substantially improved over today's baseline and on a credible trajectory toward the ten-fold target, with the remaining gap understood and planned for rather than hoped about.
• Run a large campaign end to end: material staged, process executed, turnaround and cleaning completed, waste handled, data captured.
• Have a defined and enforced clarified lysate specification, with downstream performance characterized against it, so a change in midstream no longer produces a surprise in purification.
• Have trained our midstream operators to run the new equipment to procedure, so campaign execution doesn't depend on you standing at every station.

Within 12 months, you will:

• Have delivered roughly ten-fold midstream throughput, demonstrated across multiple production campaigns-repeatable, not a best day.
• Have delivered on our contracted volumes on time, which is ultimately the only outcome that matters.
• Have meaningfully reduced the labour hours required per kilogram of biomass processed, and have a clear point of view on which parts of the process should be automated next.
• Have a fully documented process-SOPs, CIP and maintenance procedures, run records, troubleshooting guides-structured well enough to serve as a foundation for our quality management system.
• Be the person the company relies on for midstream manufacturing, with the credibility that comes from having made a hard number real.

About our team

Our story and approach to science are anything but conventional. Matt (co-founder/CEO) was a touring punk rock musician who dropped out of University before returning to complete his PhD in cell biology. Jalene (co-founder/COO) is a social researcher by training, previously working on issues from the right to affordable housing to harm reduction. The spark of an idea for our technology came while waiting in line for tiny, Canadian donuts. Our broader team of scientists, engineers, circus performers, restaurateurs, dancers, music aficionados, kid parents, pet parents, cyclists, and artists hail from every corner of the world - from small town Alberta to Poland, India, Vietnam and Pakistan. We credit our diverse team and experiences as the key to our success - and we encourage candidates of all identities and backgrounds to apply.

FAQs

Where is Future Fields located?

Our headquarters and production facility are located in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, in a renovated historic warehouse. From the exposed brick to our summer patio - it's not your average lab space. It is central, close to transit and bike lanes, and walking distance to some of the city's best coffee shops, restaurants and Edmonton's incredible river valley.

I don't live in Edmonton. Why would I want to relocate there?

Because it's great! Edmonton is a young, vibrant city that punches way above its weight. We are one of Canada's sunniest cities and offer an unmatched quality of life with a low cost of living. We're home to North America's largest urban parkland (the River Valley is a playground for cyclists and runners), a festival scene that runs year-round, a rapidly growing tech and biotech ecosystem, and we're exploding with award-winning independent restaurants. It's a place where you can build a career and a life - without the big-city price t