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David Careers

Computational Materials Scientist for Machine-Learned Interatomic Potentials (MD/DFT)

Posted 2 days ago

amphiformFargo (ND)
Materials ScientistsResearch and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences

SENIORITY

Senior

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About the role

About Amphiform: Amphiform (amphiform.com) is building next-gen energy materials for AI data centres, defence and space: light, abundant and powerful. We achieve that by creating a new type of matter: hybrid materials, built atomic layer by atomic layer, where every atom has a pre-programmed purpose. We just closed a $5.5+1m pre-seed led by General Catalyst and Main Object, with Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), Charlie Songhurst, and others.
The role: We are developing a new class of material: an ultrathin, vapour-deposited hybrid materials with custom properties - and we want to understand the fundamental properties. You will own our first atomistic simulation campaign: predicting conductivity (electron, ion, heat), hydration behaviour, and interfacial transport in a material that has never been simulated, and testing your predictions against experiments that we'll run constantly alongside. The workflow (DFT benchmarking → amorphous structure generation → fine-tuned machine-learned interatomic potentials with active learning → large-scale transport MD, enhanced sampling, and path-integral MD) is scoped, budgeted, and precedented in the recent literature; the material is not. You will be our first dedicated computational hire, working directly with the experimental team.
What you'll do:
  • Benchmark DFT functionals against coupled-cluster references for proton-transfer energetics, and own the resulting error budget
  • Build amorphous model structures of a hybrid metal-organic network validated against our data
  • Fine-tune foundation MLIPs (MACE-class) with active learning; run DFT labelling campaigns
  • Run nanosecond-scale transport MD, metadynamics, and PIMD to extract diffusion coefficients, activation energies, isotope effects, and interfacial behaviour
  • Turn simulation into decisions: feed results into our materials and process development, and publish the methodology with usDefine our simulation infrastructure (environments, data management, reproducibility)
What we're looking for:
  • PhD in computational chemistry, physics, or materials science
  • Hands-on ab-initio MD experience on HPCYou have trained at least one machine-learned interatomic potential (MACE, NequIP, Allegro, DeepMD, GAP, or similar) and can explain how you built the training set and knew it was converged
  • Strong scientific Python
Nice to have:
  • Ion transport background
  • Amorphous/disordered structure generation
  • Path-integral MD (i-PI), GCMC (RASPA), charge-partitioning workflows, or workflow engines (psiflow, Parsl, Snakemake)A benchmark culture: DLPNO-CCSD(T), functional selection, error bars you can defend

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