JONA ENGEL.
Personal notes · industrial technology

Engineering facts into commercial decisions.

I work between technical capability and the people who decide where money, time, and engineering effort go. My route runs from materials research at ETH Zürich through capital-equipment sales in the Americas to new-business development in Zug.

About

A technical route into market work

Black-and-white portrait of Jona Engel wearing glasses and a dark turtleneck.
Jona Engel · St. Gallen, Switzerland

I began in materials science in Saarbrücken, completed mechanical engineering studies in Oregon, and earned a joint materials master's in Saarland and Luleå. At ETH Zürich, I worked on wear-resistant metal-matrix composites with industrial partners.

I later moved to Boston to sell two-photon polymerization systems across the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Today I live in St. Gallen and work in group-level new-business development for an industrial company in Zug.

I have studied or worked in Germany, Sweden, the United States, and Switzerland. Those settings taught me to check how the same technical fact changes meaning across a laboratory, a production team, and a budget review.

My technical work included high-speed nanoindentation, SEM and EDX, microstructure analysis, thermodynamic and kinetic modelling, and small Julia and C tools. The commercial work added qualification plans, procurement, facility constraints, and the internal sequence behind an industrial purchase.

Experience

Research, equipment sales, and new markets

  • Industrial group · Zug · 2024 to present
    Business Development Manager working across R&D, customer teams, sales, and executive reviews for an industrial technology platform. The work includes screening application areas, structuring pilots, and bringing market evidence into development choices.
  • Nanoscribe · Boston · 2022 to 2023
    Sales Manager Americas for two-photon polymerization and grayscale lithography systems. I worked with universities, start-ups, and industrial R&D teams across the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
  • ETH Zürich · research employment 2017 to 2021; studies to 2023
    Research Assistant and doctoral researcher on carbide-reinforced coatings for industrial wear protection, including work with Hilti, OC Oerlikon, and Kistler. I combined experiments, characterization, and modelling, and co-taught a materials and manufacturing course serving about 700 students.

Selected public work

Read the research background and publication record

Method

Start with the decision and its threshold

When a technical programme stalls, I separate three kinds of statement: what has been observed, what follows from it, and what remains unknown. Then I connect the open question to a named decision and a threshold.

A coating result, for example, is incomplete without its load, temperature, material, geometry, and failure mode. The operating team needs to know whether those conditions match production. A person holding budget needs to know which risk or cost changes if the result survives that transfer.

  • Commercial: Who bears the cost or risk, and who can authorize a change?
  • Technical: Which failure mode, boundary condition, or production step controls the result?
  • Evidence: Which result would support, stop, or redirect the work?

I keep assumptions visible, prefer a bounded test with a stated consequence, and revisit a model when new evidence changes the input. This makes it easier to disagree about the substance instead of arguing over a polished summary.

Read the full note: I hunt for the next proof →

Claude Lorrain's harbour scene with classical buildings, small working figures, boats, and a low sun.
Claude Lorrain · Port de mer avec l'embarquement de la reine de Saba · 1648 · The National Gallery, London (NG14) · public domain · image provenance
Notes, essays & markets

Field notes, one essay, and two market notes

Seven short field notes on evidence, choice, and the capital logic underneath them. Each began as a public LinkedIn post and is paired with a painting. Alongside them sit a longer essay and two market notes.

The paintings give each argument a visual counterpoint. Bruegel places a famous fall at the edge of a working landscape; Rembrandt shows five guild syndics examining cloth while a servant stands behind them. Reproduced works are public domain. Sources and provenance are listed here.

Contact

Public links

Privacy & contactemail Google Scholarresearch LinkedIncareer ResearchGatepublications

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