Computational Scientist, Differentiable Physics

Job description

## About the Role Periodic Labs is building AI systems that can simulate physical science, verify predictions, and train on the full scientific method. We are looking for a Computational Scientist to build differentiable, accelerator-ready simulations for industrially relevant continuum-physics problems. You should be equally comfortable with governing equations, solver code, and deep learning. We are open to expertise in any area of continuum-physics, with at least some experience in fluid dynamics. You will work on building simulation capabilities in challenging, data-limited domains requiring a mix of physics-based and empirical approaches. ## What You’ll Do - Build and extend differentiable solvers for continuum simulation (including but not limited to fluid dynamics), especially multi-scale and multi-physics problems. - Implement numerical methods from equations and papers, and diagnose convergence, stability, and modeling failures. - Combine simulation with deep learning for surrogate modeling, learned physics, inverse problems, parameter estimation, and optimization. - Use automatic differentiation and modern accelerators with JAX or PyTorch to make simulations scalable and trainable. - Validate models against experiments, trusted benchmarks, or high-fidelity simulations. - Create datasets and evaluations to guide the development of LLMs to accelerate and automate these tasks. ## You Will Thrive Here If You Have - A PhD or equivalent research experience in applied mathematics, computational science, physics, engineering, computer science, or a related field. - Code-level experience building or substantially modifying PDE solvers, numerical methods, or differentiable simulations. - Deep expertise in at least one continuum domain, with breadth across domains or a demonstrated ability to learn new physics quickly. - Meaningful experience building, training, and evaluating deep-learning models for physical systems. - Strong Python and software-engineering skills, especially JAX, PyTorch, Julia, or C++. - Experience applying simulation to realistic scientific or engineering problems, not only clean academic benchmarks. - A startup mentality: ownership, good judgment under uncertainty, and enthusiasm for building from scratch. ## Strong Candidates May Also Have - Experience with fluid dynamics plus another continuum domain, or with multiphysics and multiscale modeling. - Expertise in adjoint methods, implicit differentiation, differentiable programming, or scientific optimization. - Experience accelerating scientific software on GPUs or TPUs. - Contributions to scientific open-source software used by others. - Experience connecting simulation to experiments, engineering decisions, semiconductors, or autonomous workflows. ## Mechanics - **Minimum education**: Bachelor's degree or similar experience - **Location**: Menlo Park, CA (Soon: San Francisco, too) - **Compensation**: $250,000-350,000 + equity - **Visa sponsorship**: Yes, we sponsor visas and will do everything we can to assist in this process.