Co-Founder & CTO - AI Catalyst Discovery Venture

The Venture

Discovering a better catalyst still runs on trial and error: form a hypothesis, synthesise a few candidates, test, repeat, for years, at a cost measured in millions. Most of the search space is never touched. It is one of the slowest, most expensive bottlenecks between the chemicals industry and a lower-carbon future.

We're building the company to change that. Spun out of A*STAR, our platform closes the loop between computation and the lab: machine learning proposes catalyst compositions worth making, simulation screens them, and an automated experimental workflow validates the winners, feeding every result back to sharpen the next cycle. It reaches candidates a traditional programme never would, in a fraction of the time and cost.

The beachhead is CO₂ to methanol and green chemicals, where industry pull is real and the economics work. Most catalyst work is improving a recipe that already exists, and the incumbent supplier usually keeps that business. The opportunity is a new process with no incumbent catalyst, and an unusual number of those are arriving between now and 2030. The core discovery IP is being licensed from A*STAR, with the inventor on board as an advisor. What the venture needs now is a founding technical leader to own the science and build the company around it.

The Role

You'll be the founding CTO. You'll own everything from the discovery campaign to a catalyst a customer can actually run in their process, taking a validated workflow and turning it into the engine of a real business. You'll work alongside a commercial co-founder (CEO), a dedicated ATUM venture team, and the inventor-advisor.

Together, we'll

Direct the catalysis: which chemistries we pursue, how we design the discovery campaigns, how we read the results
Own the licensed workflow and the automated experimental loop end to end
Take candidates from prediction to a manufacturable, deployable catalyst, not a paper
Build defensible IP the company owns, including new catalyst compositions worth patenting
Sit across the table from chemical customers and turn their process problems into targets we can solve
Build the lab foundation and the science team behind it

This is not a job. It's a founding journey where you share the risk, the upside, and the impact.

Requirements

Deep in heterogeneous materials, ideally catalysis: You hold a PhD in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, or Materials Science, with roughly 8 to 15 years turning chemistry into things that run in the real world. Heterogeneous catalysis is the strongest fit, but we're open to adjacent ground: electrocatalysis, energy materials, nanomaterials, surface and interface chemistry. What matters is that you understand surfaces, synthesis and reactors
Industry-tested: You've done this inside a chemicals, catalyst or materials company's R&D, or a deep-tech startup. You know why a promising result dies at scale-up. You care whether a catalyst is manufacturable and deployable, not whether it makes a good paper
Comfortable directing the AI, not running it: You won't write the models yourself, but you can steer a computation-and-ML-driven discovery loop and decide what to make and test next
You've built physical capability before: A lab, a rig, a pilot line, a testing setup. Ideally on a budget that forced hard choices about what to buy, build or outsource
A builder, not a career scientist: You want to run a company, not hold a senior title inside someone else's. You're ready to leave a stable role, take equity over salary, and own the outcome, and you're energised by conservative industrial buyers rather than put off by them

Benefits

Why Build With Us

A hard problem worth owning: A real scientific and commercial challenge with a clear prize, and the science is yours to lead
A de-risked starting point: A validated workflow with industry programmes behind it, a licence from A*STAR, an inventor handing over the know-how, and real industry pull. Not a blank page
Founder-led: You're a co-founder with a C-level seat and meaningful founding equity, not an employee
Funding-ready: ATUM backs the build with pre-seed capital and grant access, plus follow-on support from our investor network
Hands-on partners: We're in the trenches on product, hiring, and fundraising, not just on the cap table

Based in Singapore, where the lab and the A*STAR relationship sit. If you're not here, we sponsor and support EntrePass applications.

This is a from-zero build with real risk, and compensation is equity rather than salary until we raise. If what you want is a stable senior R&D role, this isn't it. If you want to own the science and build the company, read on.