Staff Computational Materials Scientist

Commonwealth Fusion Systems•Devens, MA

11d•Onsite

About The Position

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is dedicated to accelerating the transition to fusion energy by developing commercially viable fusion power plants. The Materials and Processing (M&P) Department at CFS plays a crucial role in supporting design engineers, supply chain, and manufacturing through material selection, definition of processing routes, validation, and R&D for new materials. The department focuses on engineering, testing, and development programs to support the SPARC tokamak and the future ARC fusion power plant. These projects present significant materials challenges due to extreme conditions such as neutron fluxes, high heat loads, molten salt coolants, complex geometries, strong magnetic fields, and cryogenic mechanical loading. CFS is seeking a Computational Materials Scientist with expertise in process-structure-property relationships, physics-informed modeling, and materials for extreme environments. The ideal candidate will possess a background in both computational materials simulation and materials science/physical chemistry. This role involves physics-based modeling, synthetic data generation, and first-principles modeling to support materials development, collaborating with experts to identify critical parameters and optimize experimental efforts.

Requirements

Materials Science and Engineering, Applied Physics, Applied Mathematics, Physical Chemistry, Computer Science or related field.
Minimum of 10+ years experience in experimental or computational materials science.
Experience using computational materials science tools and integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) tools to answer specific scientific or engineering questions across length scales.
Implementation and/or authorship of codes for calculation and analyses of material properties and microstructures.
Predictive models for material properties and microstructure evolution in extreme environments.
Validation of models with experimental data or physical mechanism bounds.
Understanding process-structure-properties-performance principles and fundamental mechanisms responsible for property changes in extreme environments.
Understanding of the underlying models that enable materials simulation methods across length scales including; Atomistic, molecular dynamics, density functional theory, Monte Carlo, phase field, crystal plasticity, dislocation dynamics, and computational thermodynamics, finite element.
Scientific computing, numerical algorithms, FEM, FD, FVM, BEM, eigen/linear/PDE solvers, convex optimization, computational geometry, advanced statistical methods.
High-performance computing: distributed processing, message parsing interface, gpu acceleration.
Understanding of the sensitivity to uncertainty in the inputs and outputs of those calculations or models.
Demonstrated ability to work effectively cross-functionally.
Excellent organizational skills including prioritization of multiple concurrent projects.
Ability to break down complex problems into smaller deliverables that add value.
Perform activities such as typing and sitting for extended periods of time.
Dedication to safety to mitigate industrial hazards that may include heat, cold, noise, fumes, strong magnets, lead (Pb), high voltage, and cryogenics.
Willingness to travel or work required nights/weekends/on-call occasionally. Travel less than 10%.

Nice To Haves

Experience displaying complex quantitative data in a simple, intuitive format and presenting findings clearly and concisely.
Experience making and justifying decisions in fast paced engineering settings.
Written and verbal communication with technical teams.
Taking under-defined problems and driving them to a state of completion.
Operating in a flexible, service-oriented engineering domain team.

Responsibilities

Use and build computational toolsets, workflows, and methods to generate predicted material properties in extreme environments including temperature, radiation, and magnetic field with uncertainty bounds informed by physical mechanisms.
Identify chemical and microstructural features that strongly impact material performance in extreme environments, and quantify the relationships for use in optimization for engineering application.
Inform design of experiments for materials in extreme environments, including simultaneous corrosion, stress, and irradiation, as well as magnetic field, electric field, and high temperature.
In collaboration with design and analysis engineers, develop material design curves methodology capable of determining statistically significant minimum properties for tokamak applications such as low and high cycle fatigue, dielectric breakdown, radiation effects.
Identify gaps in knowledge and experimental capability which can be filled via simulation or model building.
Assist in benchmarking and creating metrics for material property variability and sources of variability in manufacturing, fabrication, assembly, and processes.
Collaborate with other M&P Engineers to create workflows to enable the appropriate capture, storage, data visualization and analysis of data generated within the materials domain.
Support writing materials standard specifications.
Stay current with the evolving technology and modeling techniques.