Software Engineer

Reposted 29 Days Ago
Menlo Park, CA, USA
In-Office
Mid level
Artificial Intelligence • Hardware • Information Technology • Robotics
From bits to atoms.
The Role
As a Software Engineer in MES, you'll develop and scale systems that manage automated materials synthesis, focusing on scheduling, workflow orchestration, and ensuring accurate data provenance.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Periodic Labs

We’re an AI and physical sciences company building state-of-the-art models to accelerate breakthroughs across materials, energy, and beyond. Backed by world-class investors and growing rapidly, we operate at the pace the frontier requires. Our team brings deep expertise, genuine ownership, and an insatiable drive to push the boundaries of what’s scientifically possible.

About the Role

We’re hiring software engineers to build the backend and distributed systems that form the software backbone of an AI-native physical science lab. These systems turn scientific intent into reliable execution: scheduling large simulation workloads, orchestrating experiments and shared equipment, and connecting instruments and automation to the rest of our software.
Depending on your background and interests, you may work across simulation infrastructure, lab orchestration, or automation systems. You do not need prior experience in every area. We care most about strong engineers who can reason about complex systems, make failure visible, and build software that remains reliable as scientific work scales.
You’ll work directly with scientists, infrastructure engineers, and lab engineers to understand how research gets done, then turn prototypes and manual workflows into robust systems without slowing down discovery.

What You’ll Do
  • Design and build backend and distributed systems that execute scientific work reliably.

  • Build scheduling and orchestration for long-running workflows across compute clusters, instruments, and other shared resources.

  • Create clear APIs, data models, and service boundaries connecting research software, lab information systems, instruments, and automation.

  • Make execution inspectable and recoverable through durable state, retries, failure handling, observability, and provenance.

  • Turn promising research prototypes and scientific workflows into maintainable production systems.

  • Diagnose bottlenecks and failures across application code, infrastructure, data, and hardware integrations.

  • Work closely with scientists and engineers to improve experimental throughput, reliability, and reproducibility.

You Will Thrive in This Role If You Have Experience With
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals and a track record of building production backend or distributed systems.

  • Experience with asynchronous or long-running work, such as batch jobs, workflow orchestration, data pipelines, schedulers, or shared-resource systems.

  • The ability to reason clearly about concurrency, idempotency, partial failures, consistency, and resource contention.

  • Experience designing maintainable APIs and data models for complex systems.

  • Strong debugging skills across services, infrastructure, dependencies, and data.

  • Comfort working with technical collaborators to turn ambiguous needs into reliable systems.

Especially Strong Candidates May Also Have

You do not need experience in every area below. Depth in one or more may help us identify where you can have the greatest impact.

  • Large-scale batch or distributed compute, scientific simulation, GPU workloads, or ML infrastructure.

  • Workflow engines, DAG orchestration, job schedulers, or cluster execution systems.

  • LIMS, MES, ERP, process-control systems, lab informatics, or scientific data management.

  • Robotics, hardware controls, instrument drivers, vendor APIs or SDKs, or industrial automation.

  • Experience in a physical lab, manufacturing environment, or materials-science setting.

Mechanics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or similar experience

Location: Menlo Park, CA or Montreal, Canada. (Soon: San Francisco, too)

Compensation: $250,000-350,000 + equity

Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.

Skills Required

  • Experience building production MES, LIMS, ERP, or process control systems
  • Experience with Workflow/DAG orchestration
  • Knowledge of data modeling for audit and provenance use cases
  • Experience in concurrent systems and scheduling algorithms
  • Familiarity with materials manufacturing environments like powder synthesis or ceramics
  • Experience with event sourcing or append-only data architectures
Am I A Good Fit?
beta
Get Personalized Job Insights.
Our AI-powered fit analysis compares your resume with a job listing so you know if your skills & experience align.

The Company
32 Employees
Year Founded: 2025

What We Do

We're building AI scientists and the autonomous laboratories for them to operate.

Similar Jobs

Boeing Logo Boeing

Software Engineer

Aerospace • Information Technology • Software • Cybersecurity • Design • Defense • Manufacturing
In-Office
Seal Beach, CA, USA
170000 Employees
113K-222K Annually

General Motors Logo General Motors

Software Engineer

Automotive • Big Data • Information Technology • Robotics • Software • Transportation • Manufacturing
Hybrid
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
165000 Employees
123K-190K Annually

Block Logo Block

Software Engineer

Blockchain • eCommerce • Fintech • Payments • Software • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency
In-Office or Remote
8 Locations
12000 Employees
153K-270K Annually

Benchling Logo Benchling

Software Engineer

Cloud • Healthtech • Social Impact • Software • Biotech
Hybrid
San Francisco, CA, USA
605 Employees
194K-265K Annually

Similar Companies Hiring

LTX Thumbnail
Robotics • Conversational AI • Generative AI
Jerusalem, Israel
200 Employees
Onshore Thumbnail
Artificial Intelligence • Fintech • Software • Financial Services
New York, New York
60 Employees
Revel.io Thumbnail
Aerospace • Hardware • Robotics • Software
US
50 Employees

Sign up now Access later

Create Free Account

Please log in or sign up to report this job.

Create Free Account