R&D Engineer

What we’re building

Xplora Ventures is a deep-tech startup developing a new category of energy storage — a heat battery called HeatVaultTM that stores excess warmth from summer and releases it in winter. By enabling long-duration, zero-loss thermal storage, we aim to redefine how the world stores and uses heat. 

Our vision is to  move energy beyond boundaries — of time, place, and imagination. We’re now hiring two R&D roles (one focused on materials, and one on reactor systems)  to help solve two of our most important technical challenges: 

• Developing and scaling up a thermochemical material that stores energy with high density and durability

• Engineering a reactor system that moves heat in and out of that material with precision, repeatability, and scalability

If you’re curious, hands-on, and hungry to grow, this might be the role you’ve been waiting for. We value people who are: 

• Humble – open to learning, self-aware, and collaborative 

• Hungry – driven to build, explore, and get stuff done 

• Smart (in the people sense) – emotionally and interpersonally intelligent 

What you’ll do (short-term focus)

• Help design, build, and test a working thermochemical reactor system

• Collaborate with a broad range of specialists to integrate various components and other critical features to scale up the process

• Combine thinking and doing — this is a “lab-coat AND wrench” role

• Contribute to iterative prototyping, test planning, and engineering documentation

What we’re looking for (longer-term mindset)

We’re not just hiring for a task — we’re hiring for trajectory. The right person for this role is: 

• Self-motivated — You proactively experiment, explore, and learn 

• Comfortable with ambiguity — You thrive in building novel solutions 

• Driven to grow — You aspire to leadership in your field 

• Adaptable — You evolve with the company and embrace new challenges 

• Resilient and resourceful — You learn from failures and collaborate 

Your mission

At Xplora, we are developing a novel composite material for use in thermochemical energy storage (TCES) — a system that stores heat chemically and releases it on demand, with minimal loss over time.

Your mission is to help design, validate, optimise and scale up this material so it: 

• Achieves high energy density

• Maintains stable performance over multiply charge/discharge cycles

• Operates within target regeneration temperatures and heat output

• Retains robust structural integrity during repeated cycling

You’ll also play a key role in translating material discoveries into manufacturable components for reactor integration.

Key Skills & Experience We’re Looking For

• Experience with material formulation and solid–gas systems (e.g. sorbents, salts, binders, or composites)

• Familiarity with moisture adsorption, porosity, and heat/mass transfer in porous media (e.g: zeolite, silica materials, or MOF etc. )

• Understanding of reaction kinetics and thermodynamics, especially for endothermic/exothermic cycling processes 

• Proficiency in material characterisation tools, including:

  • TGA (Thermogravimetric Analysis)

  • DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry)

  • SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy)

  • XRD (X-ray Diffraction)

A note from us

We want to hire one person, with two-person output, and three-times growth. If you’re someone who wants more than just a job — who wants to build something that matters and grow as fast as the company does — let’s talk.

Just send us a note — even a few paragraphs is fine — about why this role sounds exciting to you. Include your CV, or a project you’ve built, or something else that tells your story.

👉 Email: Nan Yang at nan@xploraventures.com