Staff Scientist – Agents for Science

About the role

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) is seeking a Staff Scientist – Agents for Science to pioneer AI systems that can reason, plan, act, and collaborate in support of scientific discovery. This role is an opportunity to work at the frontier of agentic AI, foundation models, scientific workflows, and high-performance computing.

Responsibilities

• Designing and developing agentic AI systems for scientific discovery, including systems that can reason, plan, retrieve information, invoke tools, and execute multi-step scientific tasks.
• Developing agents that can interact with simulation workflows, data pipelines, scientific software, instruments, knowledge bases, and computational tools.
• Building methods for tool use, workflow orchestration, memory, planning, adaptation, and decision-making in scientific environments.
• Evaluating agent performance in terms of scientific usefulness, reliability, robustness, efficiency, and safety.
• Contribute to a team culture that values scientific excellence, collaboration, innovation, and inclusive professional growth.

Requirements

• Required Qualifications: RD2: Bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of experience, or Master’s degree and 3+ years of experience, or PhD and 0+ years of experience, or equivalent.
• Experience with reinforcement learning, planning, or sequential decision-making.
• Strong programming skills in one or more languages such as Python, C, C++.
• Experience with one or more AI frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or related tools.
• Experience designing, implementing, and evaluating complex AI systems.
• Good communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Ability to model Argonne’s core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity, and teamwork.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with LLM-based systems, retrieval-augmented generation, tool calling, or workflow agents.
• Experience integrating AI systems with scientific software, simulations, databases, or experimental workflows.
• Experience with distributed training, inference systems, or HPC environments.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits are part of the total rewards package. Click here to view Argonne employee benefits!

Pay

The expected hiring range for this position is $94,486.00 - $147,398.94. Please note that the pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as, but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, business considerations, internal equity, and external market pay for comparable jobs.