Company Description
By 2050, the planet could be using twice as much electricity compared to today. Are you interested in contributing and helping to shape the future of the world’s energy? If so, read on.
Fusion, the process that powers the Sun and Stars, is one of the most promising options for generating the cleaner, carbon-free energy that our world badly needs.
UKAEA leads the way in realizing fusion energy, partnering with industry and research for groundbreaking advancements. Our goal is to bring fusion electricity to the grid, supported by tomorrow's power stations. In pursuit of our mission, UKAEA embraces core values: Innovative, Committed, Trusted, and Collaborative."
As an employee of UKAEA you will benefit from:
- Outstanding defined benefit pension scheme, details of which can be found at the end of this advert.
- Corporate bonus scheme up to 7% and a Relocation allowance.
- Flexible working options including family friendly policies.
- Employee Assistance Programme and trained Mental Health First Aiders,
- Emergency paid leave, Generous annual leave allowance (30.5 days) increased with length of service,
- Wide range of career development opportunities
- A vibrant culture committed to being fully inclusive
This role requires employees to
complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions.
The salary for this role will be at Level 4, which is £38,620. This includes a base pay of £35,520 and a Market Premium Payment (MPP) of £3,100. The position offers hybrid working hours, and we are open to candidates looking for Part time hours as well.
Job Description
Are you interested in applying your computational skills to a next generation of plasma physics and engineering codes? Could you help us solve fusion's most important problems?
We are currently seeking someone who is passionate about solving large computational problems by pulling together open source frameworks into actionable high performance computing software that is well designed, performant and rigorously tested. This role involves solving a combination maths, physics, and computing problems alongside a dedicated multi-disciplinary team. As a key expert on your projects, you bring in-depth expertise to the table. You will give input in planning, report to stakeholders and engage in bi-directional knowledge exchange with your collaborators.
Your experience will place you somewhere between plasma physicist and numerical simulation expert, perhaps from the computational fluid dynamics, pharmaceuticals or engineering industries. You will bring strong skills associated with writing performance critical code, ideally with a background in GPU programming. Making numerically robust, user-friendly software with modern open-source practices is second nature to you. You will be comfortable being part of a team of people with complementary backgrounds, and be eager and open in your interdisciplinary development. Knowledge of any of the following is also of great benefit: finite elements; SYCL; message passing interface; computational fluid dynamics; Monte Carlo particle methods; code generation; uncertainty quantification; and surrogates.
If you are a talented numerical scientist or scientific software developer who is passionate about solving difficult problems with the biggest supercomputers around and looking for an exciting new challenge, we encourage you to apply for this role.
Additional Responsibilities:
- Design, implement, optimise and deliver actionable software to deliver UKAEA's mission.
- Research cutting edge numerics and computational frameworks, and integrate them.
- Support and provide technical leadership to physicists, engineers and managers.
- Act as key team member on projects of moderate scale and/or complexity.
Qualifications
Essential Requirements:
- At least a Masters degree in a computational, mathematical or physical science discipline or equivalent experience.
- Demonstrable experience in one or more relevant computational fields (e.g. particle-in-cell, Vlasov, computational fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, finite element methods, computational electromagnetics).
- Demonstrable expertise in at least one of the following languages: C++, Fortran, C, Rust, Julia, R, Python with cython / numba / jax / other acceleration).
- Ability to use UNIX operating systems, particularly the command line interface.
- Knowledge of modern software engineering processes.
- Demonstrable experience of implementing numerical algorithms.
- Knowledge of parallel programming techniques – such as MPI.
Desirable Requirements:
- Experience using particle-in-cell plasma codes such as EPOCH, OSIRIS, VPIC, PICLas, WarpX, ORB5.
- An understanding of neutral-plasma interactions including plasma-surface interactions.
- Experience developing collisional-radiative models.
- Experience writing SYCL code or equivalent performance portability framework.
- Familiarity with and experience finite element frameworks like FENICSx, Firedrake, MOOSE, Nektar++, mfem.
- An interest and knowledge of Uncertainty Quantification and its impact on design solutions.
Additional Information
A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/
We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly individuals from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.
Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.
