Computational Scientist Structural and Thermal
AI research and deployment company building AI scientists and autonomous laboratories for physical-science discovery.
About Periodic Labs
Periodic Labs develops specialized AI models and high-throughput autonomous labs that run and analyze physical experiments, initially for materials discovery including superconductors, magnets, and semiconductor applications.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will develop structural, thermal, and coupled thermo-mechanical simulation capabilities for semiconductor systems and advanced materials. You will build and extend solvers, validate models against experimental measurements, create simulation datasets for machine learning, and automate scalable simulation workflows.
Requirements
- PhD or equivalent research experience in mechanical engineering, materials science, aerospace engineering, or a related field
- Foundation in solid mechanics and heat transfer
- Experience writing or substantially modifying FEM codes, constitutive models, or custom solvers
- Strong Python skills
- Understanding of continuum mechanics, constitutive modeling, variational methods, and numerical PDE methods
- Experience applying mechanics or thermal simulations to experimental observations or process decisions
- Interest in AI and machine learning
Responsibilities
- Develop structural, thermal, and coupled thermo-mechanical simulations for semiconductor systems
- Build or extend custom FEM, fracture, and mechanical solvers
- Model material behavior including elasticity, plasticity, fracture, diffusion-induced stress, and thermal expansion
- Validate models against experimental measurements
- Design evaluation datasets with RL researchers
- Generate simulated datasets for ML training
- Automate scalable simulation pipelines connecting outputs to data and ML systems