Materials R&D Engineer
Atomos Systems
Materials R&D Engineer
Atomos Systems
Develops opto-electronic AI hardware accelerators
We’re looking for a hands-on Materials R&D Engineer to develop and validate materials, interfaces, and fabrication approaches for a novel electrostatic actuator platform. This role combines creative experimental design, first-principles calculations, and practical lab work. As an early hire, you will directly shape the materials choices and development strategy.
What You’ll Do
Experimental Design: Identify key uncertainties, make first-principles estimates, and devise creative experiments to test ideas and guide design decisions.
Materials Development: Investigate liquid-metal interfaces, surface coatings, thin dielectrics, and bonding methods; connect material properties to actuator performance.
Lab Prototyping: Prepare samples, build test fixtures, and collaborate with our microfabrication team to turn concepts into working demonstrations.
Characterization: Develop repeatable measurements of electrical, mechanical, and surface behavior; analyze data, investigate failure modes, and iterate.
Qualifications
Experience: 3+ years of hands-on experimental R&D in materials science, applied physics, or a related engineering field.
Core technical skills:
Strong materials science fundamentals, including surface interactions, wetting, adhesion, dielectric behavior, and mechanical properties
Practical experience with thin films, surface treatments, eutectic metal solder, polymers, or microfabrication
Demonstrated ability to independently design experiments, build apparatus, select measurement techniques, and interpret results
Comfort using calculations and quantitative data analysis to evaluate ideas and prioritize experiments
What we value:
Strong problem-solving abilities with a first-principles approach to complex challenges
Clear communication and strong ownership in a startup setting
Genuine enthusiasm for robotics and physically intelligent systems
A builder mindset: rapid iteration, learning from failure, and shipping real hardware
Pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience
Develops opto-electronic AI hardware accelerators
At the moment, there isn’t public information tying to AtomOS Systems within the provided text; the supplied details describe Fathom Radiant, a public benefit corporation based in Boulder, Colorado (founded in 2014 by Michael and William Andregg and Christopher Own), that focuses on hardware to accelerate AI workloads. It is developing a hybrid optical-electronic interconnect fabric to create a scalable machine architecture with high bandwidth, low latency, and low power consumption for both training and inference of very large neural networks, potentially supporting artificial general intelligence. Its goal is to provide the computational foundation for advanced machine intelligence by enabling brain-scale and beyond AI compute. The company targets customers in advanced AI and ML requiring immense computational power, and has backing from notable investors such as Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Playground Global, and Jeff Bezos, among others.
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