{"id":701041,"url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-software-engineer","title":"Software Engineer","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":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"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":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-02-10T23:47:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-02-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T17:02:17Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":263,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":263},"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\nWe’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.\nDepending 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.\nYou’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.\nWhat You’ll Do\nDesign and build backend and distributed systems that execute scientific work reliably.\n\nBuild scheduling and orchestration for long-running workflows across compute clusters, instruments, and other shared resources.\n\nCreate clear APIs, data models, and service boundaries connecting research software, lab information systems, instruments, and automation.\n\nMake execution inspectable and recoverable through durable state, retries, failure handling, observability, and provenance.\n\nTurn promising research prototypes and scientific workflows into maintainable production systems.\n\nDiagnose bottlenecks and failures across application code, infrastructure, data, and hardware integrations.\n\nWork closely with scientists and engineers to improve experimental throughput, reliability, and reproducibility.\n\nYou Will Thrive in This Role If You Have Experience With\nStrong software engineering fundamentals and a track record of building production backend or distributed systems.\n\nExperience with asynchronous or long-running work, such as batch jobs, workflow orchestration, data pipelines, schedulers, or shared-resource systems.\n\nThe ability to reason clearly about concurrency, idempotency, partial failures, consistency, and resource contention.\n\nExperience designing maintainable APIs and data models for complex systems.\n\nStrong debugging skills across services, infrastructure, dependencies, and data.\n\nComfort working with technical collaborators to turn ambiguous needs into reliable systems.\n\nEspecially Strong Candidates May Also Have\nYou do not need experience in every area below. Depth in one or more may help us identify where you can have the greatest impact.\nLarge-scale batch or distributed compute, scientific simulation, GPU workloads, or ML infrastructure.\n\nWorkflow engines, DAG orchestration, job schedulers, or cluster execution systems.\n\nLIMS, MES, ERP, process-control systems, lab informatics, or scientific data management.\n\nRobotics, hardware controls, instrument drivers, vendor APIs or SDKs, or industrial automation.\n\nExperience in a physical lab, manufacturing environment, or materials-science setting.\n\nMechanics\nMinimum education: Bachelor’s degree or similar experience\nLocation: Menlo Park, CA\nCompensation: $250,000-350,000 + equity\nVisa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3659,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","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"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T14:37:52Z"}],"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":0}],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.208,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":263,"expected_fill_days":51,"reasons":["conf:1","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/periodic-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T19:36:56Z","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":30108,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"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-software-engineer"},{"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-software-engineer"},{"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-software-engineer"},{"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-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fperiodic-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":701041}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"periodic.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":701041},"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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