Computational Materials Scientist

Staff Computational Materials Scientist – Devens, MAR&D – Technology Development /Full-time /On-site

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is on a mission to deliver the urgent transition to fusion energy. Combining decades of research, top talent, and new technologies, we’re designing and building commercially viable fusion power plants. And we're working with policymakers, suppliers, and many others to build the energy industry of the future. We’re in the best position to make it happen. Since 2018, we’ve raised $4 billion of capital, making us the largest and leading fusion company in the world.

Now we’re looking for more thinkers, doers, builders, and makers to join us. People who’ll bring new perspectives, solve tough problems, and thrive as part of a team.

If that’s you and this role fits, we want to hear from you.

Join the power movement as a Staff Computational Materials Scientist

The Materials and Processing (M&P) Department at CFS supports design engineers, supply chain, and manufacturing by selecting materials, unambiguously defining materials and processing routes, validating and measuring those materials and their properties, and conducting R&D to develop new materials and processes to enable fusion power deployment.

M&P at CFS is organized around three primary thrusts: engineering, test and characterization, and development programs.

The work is undertaken in support of delivering SPARC, the net energy tokamak under construction in Devens, MA, and ultimately in designing the ARC fusion power plant.

These devices pose unique materials challenges including neutron fluxes produced by deuterium‑tritium fusion, high heat loads, molten salt coolant systems, complex component topologies, high magnetic fields, and high mechanical loading in cryogenic conditions.

To support this mission, the CFS Materials Department is seeking a Computational Materials Scientist with expertise in process‑structure‑properties relationships, physics informed modeling, and materials in extreme environments.

The ideal candidate would have a background in both computational materials simulation methods, and materials science and/or physical chemistry.

The responsibilities will include physics‑based modeling, synthetic data generation, and first‑principles modeling and simulation to support development of CFS materials.

They will collaborate with other engineers and subject matter experts to identify highest sensitivity parameters and prioritize experimental work for greatest impact to decreasing uncertainty.

• Use and build computational toolsets, workflows, and methods to generate predicted material properties in extreme environments including temperature, radiation, and magnetic field with uncertainty bounds informed by physical mechanisms.
• Identify chemical and microstructural features that strongly impact material performance in extreme environments, and quantify the relationships for use in optimization for engineering application.
• Inform design of experiments for materials in extreme environments, including simultaneous corrosion, stress, and irradiation. As well as magnetic field, electric field, and high temperature.
• In collaboration with design and analysis engineers, develop material design curves methodology capable of determining statistically significant minimum properties for tokamak applications such as low and high cycle fatigue, dielectric breakdown, radiation effects.
• Identify gaps in knowledge and experimental capability which can be filled via simulation or model building.
• Assist in benchmarking and creating metrics for material property variability and sources of variability in manufacturing, fabrication, assembly, and processes.
• Collaborate with other M&P…