Reports to: Director of Manufacturing Innovation & Process engineering
FLSA status: Exempt
Supervises: N/A
Department: Corporate Advanced Engineering
Benefits
- Salary range $125,000 - $170,000 base
- High deductible medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance, including spouse and children (modest payroll deductions)
- 10 paid holidays per year
- Vacation Starting at 3 weeks per year
- Supplemental leave (used in conjunction with Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave)
- 401K with matching company funds
- Annual bonus opportunity
- Tuition reimbursement
JOB SCOPE
The Casting Technical Expert/Engineer is the Trentwood site lead for aluminum casting metallurgy, process technology, and defect prevention. The role establishes technical direction, resolves complex casting and ingot quality problems, develops casting capability required for existing and future alloy products, and converts metallurgical knowledge into robust process windows, standards, controls, and sustained manufacturing results.
This is a senior individual-contributor role. The expert leads through recognized technical depth, data-based influence, coaching, and cross-functional partnership rather than direct supervisory authority.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
Technical Authority and Strategy
- Serve as the technical authority for DC casting of wrought aluminum alloys, including alloy behavior, melt treatment, solidification, ingot structure, surface quality, internal quality, and downstream manufacturability.
- Define and maintain the casting technology roadmap for Trentwood Facility, aligned with the site operating plan, Advanced Engineering strategy, product development priorities, capital planning, and customer requirements.
- Establish technically justified casting limits, process windows, control plans, acceptance criteria, and escalation rules for current and new alloy-product combinations.
- Assess emerging casting technologies, sensors, modeling tools, automation, and supplier capabilities and recommend adoption based on value, risk, and technical readiness.
Complex Problem Solving and Manufacturing Support
- Lead structured troubleshooting and root-cause investigations for safety, quality, recovery, productivity, and reliability issues related to melting, metal treatment, transfer, filtration, casting, homogenization interfaces, and ingot preparation.
- Apply metallurgical analysis, plant data, designed experiments, modeling, and physical evidence to distinguish causes from correlations and to develop sustainable corrective and preventive actions.
- Provide expertise support for recurring and high-consequence defects, including cracking, porosity, inclusions, oxide-related defects, segregation, grain-structure anomalies, surface defects, butt/crop losses, and downstream defects originating in casting.
- Partner with Operations, Process Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, Capital Engineering, Product Engineering, laboratories, and suppliers to implement countermeasures without compromising safety, product quality, or process stability.
Alloy, Process, and Product Development
- Lead the casting workstream for new-alloy, new-product, and process-development programs from feasibility through plant trials, qualification, industrialization, and knowledge transfer.
- Design and oversee laboratory and production trials; define hypotheses, critical variables, sampling plans, success criteria, risk controls, and post-trial decisions.
- Develop casting practices for high-strength, aerospace, semiconductor, space, and other technically demanding products supported by the Trentwood Facility.
- Ensure casting development is integrated with downstream rolling, heat treatment, finishing, inspection, and customer-performance requirements.
Process Control, Data, and Technical Standards
- Develop and improve data-driven process control, capability monitoring, defect scorecards, and early-warning indicators for casting performance.
- Sponsor the effective use of process historians, statistical methods, data analytics, models, and digital manufacturing tools to improve decision quality and process robustness.
- Create, approve, and maintain technical specifications, standard practices, trial protocols, technical reports, lessons learned, and casting knowledge repositories.
- Conduct technical reviews and audits to verify that critical casting controls are understood, measured, followed, effective, and sustained.
Technical Leadership and Knowledge Development
- Mentor casting, process, product, and manufacturing engineers; build problem-solving capability and deepen understanding of aluminum casting metallurgy.
- Lead technical practice development and facilitate rigorous improvement reviews, failure reviews across Trentwood Facility and potentially other company locations.
- Build succession depth by documenting critical know-how, creating training materials, and developing qualified technical backups for essential casting competencies.
- Represent the company professionally in technical exchanges with customers, suppliers, research organizations, and industry groups, consistent with confidentiality and intellectual-property requirements.
Key deliverables:
· Recommend technical approval, hold, modification, or escalation of casting trials and non-standard process conditions based on documented risk and evidence.
· Provide the technical recommendation for casting-related specifications, process windows, equipment requirements, control strategies, and qualification plans.
· Deliver documented root-cause conclusions, risk assessments, technical standards, project charters, trial reports, and implementation recommendations.
· Escalate conditions that present unacceptable safety, quality, compliance, equipment, or customer risk through the appropriate leadership and management-of-change processes.
· Develop & Implement Next Generation casting technologies.
About Kaiser Aluminum: Talented people join our team because we are a company passionate about environmental sustainability, employee growth, contributing back to our communities and championing a diverse and inclusive culture. We are strongly committed to expanding inclusion, equity, and diversity -- how we hire, develop, and inspire our diverse team members that reflects and relates to the increasingly multicultural community.
EDUCATION
- Bachelor of Science degree in Metallurgical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, or a closely related discipline is required.
- Master of Science or doctoral degree focused on aluminum metallurgy, solidification, or manufacturing is preferred.
EXPERIENCE
- Typically five (5) or more years of experience in aluminum casting, metallurgy, process development, or manufacturing engineering, including substantial hands-on experience in an industrial casting environment.
- Demonstrated record of solving complex aluminum DC casting and ingot-quality problems and implementing improvements that are technically rigorous and sustainable.
- Experience developing or industrializing casting practices for multiple alloy families and technically demanding products.
- Experience leading cross-functional technical projects, production trials, root-cause investigations, and management-of-change activities without relying on direct authority.
- Experience preparing technical specifications, formal reports, technical presentations, and recommendations for manufacturing and senior leadership audiences.
TECHNICAL KOWNLEDGE AND SKILLS
- Expert knowledge of aluminum physical metallurgy, phase transformations, solidification, grain refinement, segregation, hot tearing and cracking, porosity, inclusions, melt cleanliness, hydrogen control, filtration, and ingot microstructure.
- Strong working knowledge of melting and furnace practices, alloying, degassing, filtration, metal-transfer systems, DC caster operation, tooling, water systems, casting thermodynamics, process instrumentation, and relevant safety hazards.
- Ability to connect casting variables to downstream behavior in scalping, rolling, heat treatment, inspection, mechanical properties, conductivity, dimensional stability, and customer performance.
- Proficiency in structured problem solving, statistical analysis, Design of Experiments, measurement-system evaluation, process capability, risk analysis, and technical project management.
- Working knowledge of metallographic and casting-quality methods. Experience with technologies such as LiMCA, PoDFA, Prefil, Alscan, BATSCAN, inclusion analysis, hydrogen measurement, thermal analysis, microscopy, and ultrasonic inspection is preferred.
- Ability to use standard business and technical software. Experience with process historians, statistical packages, data visualization, casting simulation, or analytical programming is preferred.
PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES
- Personal Commitment to safety, product integrity, disciplined experimentation, and factual decision-making.
- Recognized technical credibility combined with humility, curiosity, and willingness to challenge assumptions constructively.
- Ability to translate complex metallurgy into clear operating guidance, business implications, and decisions for audiences at all organizational levels.
- Strong collaboration and influencing skills across Operations, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, Commercial, customers, and external partners.
- High personal ownership, sound judgment, organization, and ability to manage multiple priorities in a dynamic manufacturing environment.
- Commitment to developing others, sharing knowledge, and creating durable organizational capability rather than personal dependency.
PERFORMANCE FACTORS
- Safety and Integrity: Demonstrates visible safety leadership; identifies and controls risk; protects product integrity; and acts consistently with company values, policies, and applicable requirements.
- Technical Excellence: Produces accurate, evidence-based analysis and practical standards. Recommendations are technically sound, clearly documented, and appropriate to the level of risk.
- Business Impact: Converts technical work into measurable and sustained improvement in quality, recovery, throughput, reliability, cost, product capability, or speed of development.
- Execution and Dependability: Completes commitments with appropriate urgency, rigor, and follow-through; communicates risks and changes early; and verifies that solutions remain effective.
- Communication and Influence: Communicates complex information clearly in writing and verbally and builds alignment across functions without depending on positional authority.
- Capability Building: Strengthens technical depth through mentoring, standards, training, lessons learned, and effective transfer of knowledge to engineers and Operations.
- Relationships with Others: Works professionally and constructively with colleagues, leaders, customers, suppliers, and external technical partners.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
- Work is performed in office, laboratory, and heavy-manufacturing environments. Plant work includes exposure to molten metal, heat, noise, mobile equipment, operating machinery, and other industrial hazards requiring strict adherence to safety rules and use of required personal protective equipment.
- The role requires regular presence in production areas for observation, sampling, trials, troubleshooting, and verification of implementation. Specific physical requirements should be validated through the company job-analysis process.
- Ability to work flexible hours and respond to time-sensitive manufacturing or customer issues when technical-expert support is required.
- Travel may be required to other facilities, suppliers, customers, conferences, or research partners.
This position has been determined to be a safety-sensitive position and requires a pre-employment drug and alcohol screen that includes marijuana.
Must be a U.S. person (identified as U.S. Citizen, U.S. Permanent Resident (Green Card), any individual who is granted status as a “protected person” under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
No third-party candidate submissions are being accepted at this time for this opening.
