Staff Application Engineer

At Carbon, our mission goes beyond 3D printing. We are enabling creators everywhere to make what the world needs, right now. Our company is built on the idea that diverse fields of study must come together to solve intractable problems. We have grand ambitions to create technology that will influence industry around the world. You will be joining a diverse team with a vibrant culture, where team success is as important as celebrating individual contributions. Help us change the world and we will help you change yours. Carbon’s Application Engineering team owns the collaboration with visionary partners from concept to production readiness. As a Staff Application Engineer, you are a seasoned technical expert who leads complex, cross-functional programs from concept through production and increasingly shapes the tools, workflows, and technical strategy that scale Carbon’s Application Engineering practice. You operate with a high degree of autonomy, own outcomes across your programs, and build your influence with stakeholders across the company. You thrive in employing your creative problem-solving abilities and growing your depth of expertise across a variety of functional areas (including software, materials, hardware, product development processes, and cross-functional team leadership). You are comfortable leading engagements with external and internal company stakeholders and can handle tough situations with poise and confidence. Role is based in our Sunnyvale, CA office, working minimum 3 days a week (Tues-Thurs) onsite. Occasional travel to customer locations is required, around 10% of the time (domestic and international). Responsibilities • Educate and influence customers on Design for DLS best practices and design for manufacturability, including printer operation, materials, design guidelines, software, and post-processing; guide customers through design, aesthetic, and technical tradeoffs that meet production requirements such as cost and manufacturability. • Lead development and optimization of applications across the full lifecycle (design, file preparation, printing, post-processing, finishing, quality/validation), including customer benchmarks, prototypes, and bridge/production applications. Own technical outcomes for your programs, manage timelines and milestones, and proactively identify and mitigate risk. • Drive technical strategy for assigned applications, creating designs that leverage Carbon’s technology to deliver clear, defensible customer benefit versus standard manufacturing methods. • Evaluate projects for production based on DLS product-market fit, including technical readiness, cost model viability, and scalability, and provide well-supported recommendations to sales team and leadership. • Serve as a technical point of contact between go-to-market needs and Carbon’s Software, Product, Materials, and Hardware teams for your programs, translating customer requirements into actionable input for roadmap discussions and validating solutions. • Use hypothesis-driven approaches to define test methods, evaluate solutions, iterate on feedback, and provide recommendations to internal and external customers. • Contribute across Carbon’s key sectors beyond your primary area of expertise, applying cross-vertical insights and lessons learned to accelerate success across target industries. • Produce concise, thorough documentation and alignment artifacts (requirements, SOWs, SOPs, decision logs, next steps, action items); create reusable templates, checklists, and workflows/recipes that improve efficiency and consistency across your accounts and programs. • Mentor and coach other Application Engineers through design reviews and informal training, sharing lessons learned and reusable materials that help buil