Process Engineering Internship (Continuous Reactor Design)

This project has a duration of 6-7 months, with 7 months preferred. Anticipated start date is September 2026. Mission Our mission at Farmless is to decouple protein production from agricultural land and create an era of food abundance for humanity. We use natural fermentation and a renewable-energy based feedstock to produce amino acid complete protein ingredients. While practically all fermentation methods up till now relied on sugars - which are derived from crops grown on agricultural land - we based our fermentation platform on an easily storable and shippable liquid feedstock which can be made from the air with just renewable energy. This allows us to bypass the inefficiency of photosynthesis and break free of its limiting constraints.

Team We're a small, highly technical team with diverse backgrounds (Vegetarian Butcher, DSM, Perfect Day and many more) from all over the world. Our brewery, R&D, test kitchen and offices are all integrated under a single roof, and optimised for high speed iteration.

The Internship At Farmless, we're offering an exciting internship opportunity where you help shape the future of food production. In this role you will be tasked with researching, prototyping, and scaling a Continuous Stirred-Tank Reactor (CSTR) for use as a reaction vessel during Farmless’ continuous Downstream Process (DSP).

Responsibilities As the Process Engineering Intern at Farmless, your core responsibilities will include:

• Research mechanics and derive governing equations for control of a CSTR that works in Farmless’ DSP
• Design and build a bench-scale prototype CSTR, validating its efficacy and making improvements where needed
• Translate learnings from bench-scale prototype to construction of pilot-scale CSTR unit
• Thoroughly document research and design around the unit operation such that others understand its use and guarantees its success in the future
• All Farmless interns are pulled into various side quests based on their skills

Requirements We're looking for candidates with:

• Students working toward a M.Sc. or equivalent, with a background in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, or applied mathematics.
• Consideration of students working toward a B.Sc. will be made for exceptional candidates.
• Comfortable working in laboratory, pilot plant and office environments.
• Team player with excellent English proficiency.
• We only hire interns that need to do a mandatory internship for university.
• Internship duration of 6-7 months.
• Starting period from September-October, 2026.
• Strong skills in biochemistry, programming, controls design, or electronics are a plus.

What You Can Expect From Farmless

• €1000 gross monthly internship compensation
• Pushing forward the frontiers of food production
• Free healthy vegan lunches, snacks, and drinks
• Work in a diverse, international and dynamic team

About Farmless Farmless was founded in 2022 by Adnan Oner. Within two years we have successfully validated the full fermentation to fork process. In the fall of 2024 we moved into a single building that houses R&D, pilot brewery, food application, professional kitchen and offices. Our focus is now on scaling the process by order of magnitude steps and getting to regulatory approval in our most important markets.

We’re based within the city ring of Amsterdam – for a reason. We want to attract the best people from around the world and believe that Amsterdam is a great place to settle – and bike to work. On top of that, the Netherlands is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. The Dutch have a mindset to push the boundaries of food production and have the practical expertise to scale up our fermentation platform.

We believe that hardware startups can thrive in Europe, which has the toughest novel foods procedure of the world. When we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. (Also, we want Europe to accelerate.)

We’ve raised €6 million in total with top tier investors including World Fund, Vorwerk Ventures, Revent and Nucleus.