Focused Energy – Digital Twin Software Engineer
Focused Energy is a fusion energy startup working to generate unlimited clean energy through laser‑induced inertial fusion. We are seeking a highly skilled software engineer to architect and scale our digital twin platform, turning advanced physics and simulation models into a reliable, high‑performance software system used across the company.
What You’ll Do
- Build architecture for the digital twin platform, balancing performance, scalability, usability, and scientific rigor.
- Design, develop, and maintain high‑performance systems code for fusion reactor studies, emphasizing modularity, reuse, and long‑term maintainability.
- Establish and enforce testing, validation, and verification standards to ensure reliability, reproducibility, and trust in simulation results.
- Optimize code for performance and scalability.
- Professionalize research and prototype code into production‑quality software used across teams.
- Design APIs and interfaces that enable fast iteration and clear communication between simulation, ML, and experimental systems.
- Improve simulation throughput and turnaround time through performance optimization, parallelization, and scalable infrastructure.
- Influence how software is built across the company by setting patterns, tooling, and engineering standards.
- Contribute to the development of a comprehensive software ecosystem for fusion reactor studies.
- Work closely with experimentalists and technical departments to validate and refine computational models.
- Collaborate with other research institutions and industry partners on joint projects.
- Monitor technological advances in systems code and fusion reactor studies.
Who You Are
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, early‑stage environments and making architectural trade‑offs with incomplete information.
- Strong background in software development, engineering, or computer science, preferably with a focus on modeling and simulation.
- Familiar with the development and management of scalable cloud infrastructure, ideally in science, ML, or other data‑processing‑heavy use cases.
- Strong foundation in statistics, computer science, and machine learning.
- Experience building maintainable and testable code bases, including API design and unit testing techniques.
- Experience with HPC environments and developing scalable simulation workflows.
- Proficiency in languages such as Python, Fortran, MATLAB, and C++.
- Ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to multidisciplinary teams.
Preferred
- Experience with multi‑physics simulations, physics‑informed ML, or tightly coupled simulation–ML systems.
- Background in fusion energy, plasma physics, or adjacent scientific computing domains.
- Familiarity with systems engineering concepts, including verification, validation, and model lifecycle management.
- Experience building internal platforms or tools used by other engineers or scientists at scale.
- Contributions to shared research software, open‑source projects, or collaborative academic/industry codebases.
- Experienced in end‑to‑end/full‑stack system design, ideally within an environment supporting physics, engineering, or AI teams.
- Experience developing machine learning models at scale from inception to business impact.
What We Offer
- Innovative Technology & Mission: Join a cutting‑edge company working on groundbreaking research in clean energy and scientific discovery.
- Career Development: We invest in our people. Early, growing company at the forefront of new technology, providing opportunities for growth.
- Collaborative Culture: Work with great people in a dynamic, international environment with top‑tier scientists, engineers, and professionals passionate about solving global challenges.
- Ownership: Take ownership from day 1 and drive impact by making decisions, solving challenges, and shaping our future.
- Success is shared: Competitive salary plus company stock options for a direct stake in our success.
- Flexibility: Hybrid setup with the freedom to work from our office or from home as needed.
- Events: Regular events to foster team bonding, collaboration, and a supportive company culture.
Focused Energy is an equal‑opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive environment. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Focused Energy will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits.