{"id":701005,"url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials","title":"Research Scientist/Research Engineer, Materials Data","company":{"id":685855,"name":"Periodic Labs","domain":"periodic.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/periodic","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":31,"ghost_share":0.258,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":51,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Menlo Park, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":250000,"max":350000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"LLM","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-01T19:03:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-01","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T22:07:35Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":64,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":63},"description":"About Periodic Labs\nWe'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.\nAbout the Role\nAt Periodic Labs, we are automating scientific research in materials discovery; the data we collect, and how we represent it, is what makes this possible. We are hiring a materials scientist to work across the entire process: to find where our agents and data fail, and to fix those failures at the source. This is a hybrid research and infrastructure role. Roughly half your time will be spent working directly with our experimental and computational scientists, building agents and tools that solve active research problems. The other half will be spent improving the data those agents depend on.\nThis role requires domain depth, not just data engineering skill. You need to know, for example, what metadata actually matters for a given characterization technique. The research half of the role keeps you grounded in the problems we are actually using LLMs to solve, so the schemas you build serve real research rather than an abstraction of it. The work demands attention to detail and a willingness to get into the weeds: to meticulously read, understand, and improve our data. You'll be as much a materials scientist doing research as the person who makes our agentic harness actually work.\nWhat You'll Do\nWork directly with lab scientists and the computational team on active research problems, staying close to the actual bottlenecks LLM agents are meant to solve.\n\nInvestigate agent traces to identify data errors and agentic failure modes, and eliminate them at the source.\n\nRestructure and re-architect our materials databases (lab experiments, characterization data, computations) around how LLM agents actually reason and fail, not just around human readability. Draw on domain expertise about how to represent the data and what metadata matters.\n\nWork with the hardware and automation teams to make data collection more robust.\n\nBuild research software for lab environments, translating scientific requirements into working tools.\n\nDistill what you learn into evaluations that measure agent performance.\n\nMechanics\nMinimum experience: 4+ years of research or industry experience in experimental or computational materials science and working with data at scale.\n\nMinimum education: PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience.\n\nLocation: Menlo Park, CA\n\nCompensation: $250,000-350,000 + equity\n\nVisa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2803,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Research Labs","AI for Science"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T02:56:47Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 7","filings_12m":7,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":359643,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":38,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.686,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":63,"expected_fill_days":51,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T22:55:39Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1138,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":685855},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=685855"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fperiodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fperiodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fperiodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/periodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fperiodic-research-scientistresearch-engineer-materials"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":701005}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"periodic.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":701005},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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