Acoustic Data Scientist

About Liminal

Our mission is to accelerate the clean energy transition by decreasing the cost of battery manufacturing. We are pioneers in advanced process inspection & intelligence solutions, enabling our customers to “See Batteries Differently.” Our EchoStat platform uses ultrasound and data analytics to deliver unique, valuable insights that create value in battery production by speeding up time-to-market for new batteries, accelerating yield ramp for new production processes, and improving steady-state productivity.

Battery Market Context

In 2019, global battery production could power ~5 million EVs, however the equivalent of ~1 in every 6 batteries were scrapped in production. That’s ~$4 Billion of waste in 2019, due largely to insufficient data and analytics in production. Batteries are fundamental to our clean energy transition, but unless we change the status quo, their cost will remain a major barrier.

Our Culture and Values

• We are dedicated to building a world-class, world-positive company.
• We work closely on a foundation of mutual trust and informed decisions.
• We value personal growth, continuous learning, and safety.
• We believe the most innovative teams are inclusive of and celebrate all forms of diversity.

About the Role

As an acoustic data scientist at Liminal you will join a passionate, nimble team of engineers creating cutting-edge battery inspection equipment. You will be an integral part of our team helping to guide the development of our ultrasonic platform and providing expertise to improve our modeling efforts.

On a typical day, you may: design and implement algorithms for distilling ultrasonic signals into meaningful features, and correlate those features with physical phenomena and/or battery cell performance; evaluate the quality of the acoustic signals that are produced by our metrology equipment; expand our signal processing toolchain; build analytics tools and visualizations to empower our engineers and customers to make informed decisions regarding ultrasonic components or processing methods; or communicate your work to stakeholders with varied backgrounds, including senior management.

You value careful listening, thoughtful questions, and data-driven discussions. You are comfortable with gathering and distilling information to drive the direction of open-ended projects. The ideal candidate will approach this work with a mixture of intellectual curiosity, thoughtful creativity, and methodical rigor. The ideal candidate gets great satisfaction from seeing people do great things with their work, and above all is excited to solve hard problems that have a positive impact on the world’s clean energy future.

This is a hybrid role that requires you to be in the office at least twice a week.

Responsibilities

• Engineer and extract meaningful acoustic metrics from ultrasonic signals.
• Build protocols and procedures to evaluate and improve the signal quality of our measurements for a range of applications in battery inspection, with a variety of ultrasonic hardware.
• Continue to build our understanding of the relationship between ultrasonic signals and physical material properties.
• Help establish robust, scalable, automated processes for large scale data analysis, model development, model validation, and model implementation.
• Aid our hardware engineers in the selection, inbound evaluation, and on-system performance of our ultrasonic transducers and other ultrasonic components.
• Explore next generation applications and technologies to further expand our product offerings through internal R&D efforts and collaboration with ultrasonic component partners and vendors.
• Analyze customer and in-house data to provide actionable insights.
• Build out data visualization tools to track the status of our products.

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) or related fields and 2+ years of experience as a Data Scientist, Acoustic Engineer, or related.
• Working knowledge of the complete signal chain including ultrasound actuation, propagation, and sensing.
• Practical working experience in RF data processing.
• Knowledge of advanced signal processing techniques.
• Experience using ultrasound propagation simulation tools.
• Familiarity with Python and the Python data stack (Numpy, Scipy, Pandas, Scikit-learn).
• Practical experience working with real world data acquired from experiments.
• Strong communication skills, with a knack for conveying findings to technical and non-technical audiences visually, verbally, and/or in writing.
• Must be in the office 2 days a week.

Nice to haves (bonus skills)

• Experience defining acoustic requirements for transducers.
• Familiarity with battery testing data.
• Physical intuition about ultrasound data.
• Experience building machine learning models.
• Experience with acoustic imaging techniques and associated analysis (or similar industrial applications in materials related to batteries).

Benefits

• Annual salary of $120,000 to $180,000 based on skill level and experience.
• Competitive compensation and benefits package, including stock options, to help you and your family build a healthy and secure future.
• Annual training and education budget to support your professional development goals
• Group health benefits that provide support for employee well-being and preventative care, including comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance.
• A retirement program that helps build future financial security through both traditional and Roth 401(k) options with employer matching.
• Flexible hours and hybrid working model so you can be productive when and how is best for you.
• Generous time-off policy to allow you to refresh through vacation, personal leave, and holidays.
• For new parents, 8 weeks of fully-paid leave that you can take at any point during the first year.

Liminal is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate all forms of diversity, and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. However you identify or whatever your path here, please apply if this job excites you. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the hiring process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment.