We are looking for mission-driven, grounded folks to add to our equation.
What if your next assignment wasn’t just advising on a plant – but helping build one that could change an industry?
At Without®, we’ve proven we can turn “unrecyclable” plastic into premium materials at pilot scale. Now we’re building India’s first commercial-scale MLP recycling facility – and we need an experienced consultant who can help us translate pilot learnings into commercial reality.
This is not a purely advisory role from a distance. It is about working closely with our team on process design, equipment selection, mechanical practicality, commissioning readiness, troubleshooting, and fail-safe operations. You’ll help ensure what we learned at pilot is translated into a plant that can actually run, safely and reliably.
If you’ve helped take processes from paper to production – and know what it takes to make them work in the real world – we should talk.
Experience:
10–20 years in process engineering, with strong hands-on exposure to plant design, scale-up, commissioning, and operations – ideally in chemicals, polymers, recycling, or adjacent process industries.
Education:
B.Tech/M.Tech in Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Process Engineering, or a related discipline.
Experience with setting up and maintaining Commercial Scale Plant:
You have led the scale-up of processes from pilot to commercial. You understand that what works at pilot scale behaves differently at industrial scale, and you know how to bridge that gap.
Process Fundamentals:
Strong command over PFDs, P&IDs, mass and energy balances, process narratives, operating envelopes, and control philosophies. You can review, challenge, and strengthen process design decisions. Strong skills to analyse and improve unit economics of the plant.
Equipment & Mechanical Sense:
You understand equipment selection and practical operability across reactors, vessels, heat exchangers, pumps, compressors, filters, and dryers. You can advise on real-world issues such as nozzle placement, internals, agitation, metallurgy, maintenance access, sealing, wear, and thermal behaviour.
Fail-Safe Thinking:
You think through failure modes, process risks, and operating safeguards. You can contribute to HAZOP discussions, relief and venting philosophy, interlocks, alarms, and safe startup/shutdown logic.
Bonus – Simulation & Scale-Up Tools:
Experience with process simulation, debottlenecking studies, or CFD for reactor, heat transfer, or mixing-related decisions would be valuable.
Location:
The role can be remote. However, periodic in-person visit may be necessary when the need arises, especially once the commissioning begins. The candidate must be willing to travel to the site when critical requirement may arise.
Pilot-to-Commercial Design Support:
Support translation of pilot plant learnings into robust commercial process design. Review and strengthen PFDs, P&IDs, mass and energy balances, process narratives, and control philosophies.
Equipment Selection & Mechanical Review:
Advise on equipment selection for commercial scale and review key mechanical design inputs such as nozzle orientation, internals, agitation, supports, metallurgy, and maintainability.
Commissioning & Troubleshooting Support:
Support commissioning preparation and on-ground troubleshooting during startup and stabilization. Help investigate process upsets, trips, and quality deviations, and recommend practical fixes.
Safety & Fail-Safe Review:
Contribute to process safety reviews including HAZOP, relief philosophy, interlocks, shutdown logic, and hazard mitigation measures. Help convert learnings into robust design and operating safeguards.
Scale-Up & debugging Inputs:
Where relevant, support simulation, utilities planning, process optimization, and debottlenecking for improved plant performance and startup readiness.
This will be a consulting engagement and not a full-time employment role.
The consultant would be engaged on a retainer and/or milestone basis, depending on scope, availability, and project stage.
The engagement may include:
The detailed commercial structure, scope of work, timelines, and deliverables will be mutually agreed and documented separately.
A successful engagement would help us:
Without® is not just another social enterprise or non-profit or start-up. We are an amalgamation of all that and a lot more.
Our why, our values, our guiding principles and our mission are absolute pillars in our journey to make deep, meaningful impact. We have just launched a new brand and our first product, and are trying to build on that.
Right now, we are a small but passionate team, so our work culture is evolving as we speak. We don’t believe in hierarchy and are attempting to build an environment of self-management.
We believe the following traits are currently fuelling our evolution:
We know we are moving quickly, but it still feels too slow. We want to move faster. We want to compress many years of research into one. But at the same time, we don’t want to break things along the way. Help us find our pace.
We are outcome-focused. By that we mean it doesn’t really matter how many hours you work, it’s what you do with those hours that matters. Work hours are flexible. Our outcomes, not as much.
We are super transparent. There’s no point in sweeping conflicts under a rug. We don’t have much to hide from each other and are consistently evaluating our work, our feelings and our differences. We are our biggest critics.
No task is too small or too big for any of us to do. At the same time, we play to our strengths, optimising for the greater goal we are seeking to achieve, all the while keeping our minds open to diverse perspectives.
