Founding Process Engineer

What we're doing

Verno is building AI for engineering deliverables. We're going after the mountain of documentation work that eats most of an EPC's engineering hours: producing, revising, checking, and reconciling the documents a project actually runs on. We started with process deliverables because that's where the pain is sharpest and the data is richest.

We're a team of three. Two founders, one engineer. Our backgrounds are ML at Blue Origin, production voice AI, and industrial & government software. We have a large EPC as a design partner, real drawings in the product, and customers who want more. What we don't have is a process engineer who has lived inside an EPC and can tell us, every day, what's right and what's wrong.

That's this hire.

The job

There's no playbook. You'll be the fourth person and the only one who has done the work our customers do. Your time splits between the product and the customer. This is an early stage start-up, so while the responsibilities below are the ones most pertinent to you, for a team this small we're all doing everything.

Shape the product

• Sit with the engineering team daily. You're the person they turn to when they need to know how a process engineer actually works, not how a textbook says they do.
• Judge model outputs the way a lead engineer would judge a junior's work. Stamp it or send it back.
• Push the roadmap. If you see a bigger problem than the one we're solving, make the case.

Work with customers

• Run customer integrations end to end. Go on site, sit with their engineers, get Verno into a real project, and stay until it's used by the people doing the work, not just the managers who signed off.
• Lead discovery and demos with process leads and department managers. You've been on their side of the table and they'll know it.
• Drive go-to-market alongside the founders. Your network, your read on which firms are ready, your sense of what a project manager will actually pay for.
• Turn what you hear on site into product decisions the same week.

Who we're looking for

• 7+ years in process engineering or process design at an EPC, engineering consultancy, or owner-operator, across multiple full project cycles
• Hands-on CAD experience producing and revising process drawings. AutoCAD and AutoCAD Plant 3D, SmartPlant P&ID or Hexagon, AVEVA, Bentley, or similar. You've drafted and marked up P&IDs yourself, not just reviewed them.
• Fluent in the full process deliverable set, not only P&IDs: design basis, PFDs, heat and material balances, equipment lists and datasheets, line lists, instrument indexes, PSV sizing, HAZOP and HAZID, control narratives, cause and effect matrices
• Real understanding of how a project moves from FEL and FEED through detailed design to IFC: revision control, client markups, interdisciplinary handoffs to piping, instrumentation, structural, and civil, and the format requirements that get written into a SOW
• Comfortable in front of clients and able to leave a meeting with next steps, not just goodwill
• Strong opinions about what's broken in EPC workflows and no patience for working around it forever
• Willing to travel to client sites regularly

Bonus

• Curious about AI and software. No coding required, but you should want to know how it works.
• Relationships at mid-size EPCs in Texas, Louisiana, or Canada
• PE license

What you get

• Cash and equity compensation. This is a founding role and the equity reflects it.
• Healthcare
• Full ownership of your domain and a direct line to the founders and the roadmap
• A tiny team that ships fast and treats your expertise as the source of truth
• Visa sponsorship available for the right person

Location

Remote to start. We expect to stay remote for the next six to twelve months while we're heads down with early customers, then move to a flexible setup with regular time together in person. Client site travel starts from day one regardless.