Research Scientist / Engineer – Materials

About the role

Periodic Labs is automating materials discovery by combining AI with experimental science. The Research Scientist/Engineer will split time between hands‑on research with lab and computational teams and building the data infrastructure that powers our LLM agents.

Key responsibilities

• Collaborate with experimental and computational scientists to address active research bottlenecks.
• Analyze agent traces, identify data errors and failure modes, and correct them at the source.
• Redesign and re‑architect materials databases to align with how LLM agents reason.
• Partner with hardware and automation groups to improve robustness of data collection.
• Develop research‑grade software tools for lab environments, translating scientific needs into functional code.
• Create evaluation metrics that quantify agent performance and impact.

Required profile

• 4+ years of research or industry experience in experimental or computational materials science.
• PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• Demonstrated ability to work with large‑scale scientific data.
• Willingness to dive deep into data quality and metadata relevance for characterization techniques.

Required skills

What we offer

• Competitive base salary $250,000‑$350,000 per year plus equity.
• Visa sponsorship available.
• Hybrid work environment in Menlo Park (future expansion to San Francisco).
• Opportunity to shape cutting‑edge AI tools for materials discovery.