Computational Scientist - Differentiable Physics

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

• Compensation: $250,000-350,000 + equity

• Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas and will do everything we can to assist in this process.