Jobs · Analyst · California

Computational Chemist - GPU Acceleration

PsiQuantum · Palo Alto, CA · 3 days ago
Analyst$152k–$178k/yrFull-time

Job Summary

PsiQuantum is seeking a Computational Chemist with strong GPU acceleration and scientific software development expertise to join our Quantum Solutions team. The role involves developing and optimizing computational chemistry algorithms for GPU-accelerated computing platforms, designing scientific software for GPU architectures, and integrating classical HPC/GPU calculations with quantum-computing workflows.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, implement, and optimize computational chemistry and electronic-structure algorithms for GPU-accelerated computing platforms.

  • Design scientific software capable of efficiently utilizing NVIDIA and AMD GPU architectures, as well as conventional CPU-based HPC systems.

  • Profile and optimize computational kernels, memory movement, parallelism, and end-to-end scientific workflows to improve performance and scalability.

  • Develop computational pipelines that combine best-in-class classical approaches, including HPC and GPU acceleration, with fault-tolerant quantum-computing workflows.

  • Identify computational bottlenecks in electronic-structure and quantum-chemistry methods and develop algorithmic and software solutions to address them.

  • Implement and optimize numerical methods relevant to electronic-structure calculations, including tensor contractions, linear algebra, iterative solvers, and related computational primitives.

  • Collaborate with computational chemists, quantum algorithm researchers, and scientific software developers to benchmark and validate GPU-accelerated classical methods against emerging quantum algorithms.

  • Contribute to the architecture and development of scalable scientific software used for molecular and materials simulations.

  • Evaluate emerging GPU programming frameworks, libraries, and hardware capabilities and determine how they can improve computational chemistry workloads.

  • Participate in scientific collaborations and technical discussions across chemistry, physics, materials science, quantum computing, and high-performance computing teams.

  • Document software and research results and contribute to internal technical reports, scientific publications, and presentations.

Qualifications

  • Ph.D. in computational chemistry, theoretical chemistry, computational physics, materials science, computer science, or a closely related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

  • Strong understanding of computational chemistry or electronic-structure methods, such as density functional theory, wave-function-based quantum chemistry, atomistic simulation, or related numerical methods.

  • Demonstrated experience developing or optimizing GPU-accelerated scientific software.

  • Experience programming for GPU or heterogeneous computing environments, for example using CUDA, HIP/ROCm, or comparable GPU programming frameworks.

  • Experience working with NVIDIA and/or AMD GPU architectures and understanding of GPU performance considerations such as memory hierarchy, data movement, parallel execution, and kernel performance.

  • Strong experience with high-performance computing and parallel scientific workloads.

  • Proficiency in scientific programming and algorithm development using C++, C, Fortran, and/or Python, with the ability to work effectively in large scientific software codebases.

  • Experience profiling, benchmarking, and optimizing scientific applications.

  • Strong numerical and computational problem-solving skills and the ability to translate mathematical algorithms into efficient software implementations.

  • Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment spanning chemistry, physics, materials science, HPC, and quantum computing.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience developing GPU implementations of electronic-structure or quantum-chemistry methods.

  • Experience with both NVIDIA CUDA and AMD HIP/ROCm ecosystems, including porting or maintaining scientific software across GPU architectures.

  • Experience optimizing large computational pipelines rather than individual kernels alone, including CPU/GPU scheduling, asynchronous execution, data movement, and distributed GPU workloads.

  • Experience with GPU-accelerated scientific libraries or frameworks for dense/sparse linear algebra, tensor operations, FFTs, or related numerical workloads.

  • Experience with distributed-memory HPC environments using technologies such as MPI in combination with multi-GPU computing.

  • Experience developing, extending, or contributing to large-scale scientific software for electronic structure, quantum chemistry, or materials modeling.

  • Experience with DMRG, tensor-network methods, or other strongly correlated electronic-structure methods, particularly implementations involving large tensor contractions or GPU acceleration.

  • Experience with coupled-cluster, configuration-interaction, multireference, or other advanced wave-function-based electronic-structure methods.

  • Experience with quantum embedding, localized orbital methods, active-space approaches, or reduced electronic models derived from first-principles calculations.

  • Experience applying or evaluating quantum-computing algorithms for electronic-structure, chemistry, or materials-science applications.

  • Experience developing portable performance-critical software targeting multiple accelerator architectures.

  • Strong track record of scientific software contributions and/or peer-reviewed publications.

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