Research Scientist Agentic Workflows
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that conducts science and technology research in energy, national security, computing, materials, neutron science, isotopes, and related fields.
About Oak Ridge National Laboratory
ORNL is the largest science and energy laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. Managed by UT-Battelle for DOE, it operates research infrastructure and user facilities, conducts applied and fundamental research, and currently advances AI-enabled scientific discovery alongside its energy and national-security missions.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will design and deploy agentic workflows and frameworks that connect leadership computing resources, instruments, and cloud platforms. You will lead the development of provenance and runtime-data systems, develop facility-platform architectures, coordinate cross-institutional technical work, and maintain open-source research software. You will also collaborate with domain scientists, provide user support and training, conduct original research, and publish and present results.
Requirements
- PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field
- At least 3 years of experience designing or operating distributed systems, provenance frameworks, or workflow orchestration frameworks
- At least 2 years of experience designing agentic workflows
- At least 2 years of Python programming experience
- Working familiarity with Bash or a compiled language such as C or C++
- Experience with Linux-based HPC environments
- Familiarity with job scheduling systems such as SLURM or PBS
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to obtain and maintain a federal Personal Identity Verification card
Responsibilities
- Lead research and development of runtime data integration and provenance capture systems
- Design instrumentation, adapters, provenance data models, and scalable telemetry query, storage, and streaming layers
- Drive software architecture, technical roadmaps, releases, code review, CI/CD, testing, packaging, and documentation
- Lead cross-facility provenance and workflow-data initiatives
- Coordinate multi-institutional development teams, milestones, deliverables, schemas, APIs, and metadata standards
- Design deployable facility-platform architectures and integration patterns
- Design and implement agentic workflows for autonomous scientific experimentation
- Collaborate with domain scientists to create scalable workflow and data-capture solutions
- Provide documentation, training, and direct user support
- Conduct research and publish and present findings
Benefits
- Medical plans
- Retirement plans
- Flexible work hours
- Prescription drug plan
- Dental plan
- Vision plan
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Contributory pension plan
- Life insurance
- Disability benefits
- Vacation and holidays
- Parental leave
- Legal insurance with identity theft protection
- Employee assistance plan
- Flexible spending accounts
- Health savings accounts
- Wellness programs
- Educational assistance
- Relocation assistance
- Employee discounts
- On-site fitness facilities
- On-site banking facilities
- On-site cafeteria facilities