Periodic Labs
Data Engineer, Materials
About this role
Periodic Labs seeks a Data Engineer with deep materials science expertise to design and restructure materials databases for AI agent accessibility while contributing to active research problems. This hybrid role balances database architecture informed by domain knowledge with hands-on collaboration with lab scientists and computational teams.
What you'll do
- Redesign materials databases (experimental, characterization, computational) to be usable by LLM agents with appropriate metadata and domain-aware schemas
- Collaborate with lab scientists and computational teams on active research problems and identify LLM bottlenecks
- Design data structures optimized for how AI agents reason and fail, not just human readability
- Build research software tools that translate scientific requirements into working lab infrastructure
- Balance time evenly between database restructuring work and direct research contribution
What they're looking for
- Materials science domain expertise (characterization techniques, experimental design, computational methods)
- Database design and architecture
- Data modeling for AI/LLM systems
- Research software development
- Scientific data representation and metadata design
- Cross-functional collaboration with scientists and engineers
- Python or similar scientific computing languages
Benefits
- Competitive salary of $250,000-350,000 annually
- Equity compensation
- Visa sponsorship available
- Flexible locations in Menlo Park, Montreal, or San Francisco
- Hybrid research and infrastructure role with meaningful scientific impact
- Work with world-class investors and frontier AI applications
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Periodic Labs
Periodic Labs builds AI systems and autonomous lab infrastructure to accelerate materials discovery and scientific research, integrating machine learning with physical lab workflows and quantum simulation. The company is hiring for infrastructure engineers, product engineers, research engineers, and deployment specialists who bridge AI models with materials scientists and lab automation systems.
View all jobs at Periodic LabsLikely interview questions
- Describe your experience restructuring or designing databases for scientific data. How did you approach metadata selection?
- Tell us about a time you bridged domain expertise and engineering work. How did you ensure the technical solution addressed the actual scientific problem?