  The engineering of artificial systems hosting topological excitations is at
the heart of current condensed matter research. Most of these efforts focus on
single-particle properties neglecting possible engineering routes via the
modifications of the fundamental many-body interactions. Interestingly, recent
experimental breakthroughs have shown that Coulomb interactions can be
efficiently controlled by substrate screening engineering. Inspired by this
success } we propose a simple platform in which topologically non-trivial
many-body excitations emerge solely from dielectrically-engineered Coulomb
interactions in an otherwise topologically trivial single-particle band
structure. Furthermore, by performing a realistic microscopic modeling of
screening engineering, we demonstrate how our proposal can be realized in
one-dimensional systems such as quantum-dot chains. Our results put forward
Coulomb engineering as a powerful tool to create topological excitations, with
potential applications in a variety of solid-state platforms.
