Physics Applications - Software Engineer (Principal)

Vinci4d • Palo Alto, CA

2d • $210,000 - $285,000

About The Position

At Vinci, we are building the operator intelligence infrastructure that modern hardware programs rely on daily. We have already proven that a single foundation model works out-of-the-box across physics on realistic production workloads. Our ambition is to become the default operator intelligence layer that hardware companies run on. Our proven unified model architecture allows users to rapidly obtain steady state solutions of various partial differential equations. We are expanding this capability to support new physics, new geometries. Beyond that we are building out transient solutions, modeling interactions, deformation and dynamics. A core challenge as we scale out support is designing simple and clean interfaces that turn portions of the codebase into a clean library, ensuring they are correct and accurately reflect the underlying physics being modeled. These are promising applications where Vinci’s approach can not only reduce the compute load but also achieve greater accuracy.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in high-quality software development, with significant experience designing and building production-grade systems.
• Prior experience with scientific computing or physics simulators (FEM, FEA, Molecular Dynamics, FDTD), or large-scale machine learning systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives focused on code health, modularity, and system correctness.
• Expertise in building robust, tested, and maintainable software libraries and APIs.
• Strong proficiency in modern software development practices, including system design, agentic coding, testing frameworks, and continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD).
• Have contributed to a production data processing system.

Nice To Haves

• STEM MSc, PhD preferred but not required.
• Experience building and maintaining core ML, data infrastructure, or numerical computing software (e.g., PyTorch, Numpy, Cuda, distributed systems).
• Experience going from early stage prototype moving to a production environment
• Experience at a Startup or National Lab
• Have leveraged simulation for design or data generation purposes.

Responsibilities

• Define and implement high-quality, reusable software libraries for our core simulation engine.
• Drive code quality, testability, and architectural standards across the team, ensuring our production system scales gracefully and remains maintainable.
• Design interfaces that are easy to access and correctly reflect the physics they are modeling.
• Take ownership of critical system components.
• Mentor junior engineers.
• Guide the team in transforming research prototypes into hardened, customer-facing features.
• Collaborate closely with Physicists, AI researchers, Software Engineers and Computational Geometry experts to enforce software engineering best practices throughout the full development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment.
• Define and uphold rigorous software design standards to ensure the code base remains clean, modular, and scalable in a production environment.
• Drive strong CI, comprehensive regression testing, and validation discipline across all components.
• Independently solve complex architectural problems and take ownership of core model infrastructure evolution.
• Mentor scientists & engineers on best practices, performance optimization, and system design.

Benefits

• This is a unique opportunity for technical and professional growth, as you will define a foundational abstraction layer early in the company's trajectory.
• The team is small, friendly, and accessible.
• You will be empowered to "own and architect large pieces of the system" alongside a team of Physicists, AI researchers, Software Engineers, and Computational Geometry experts.
• This includes greenfield opportunities to expand Vinci’s core capabilities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal