Fusion LPI Computational Physicist — HPC Simulation Architect

U.S. Fusion Energy; Energy (IL); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k) with company match

Paid time off (ATO)

13 company-paid holidays

Paid parental leave

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Disability insurance

Annual company shutdown

Job summary

Xcimer Energy is hiring a Laser Plasma Interaction (LPI) Computational Physicist in Denver, CO. You will extend LPI modeling tools and develop in-house software to simulate collisional kinetics and paraxial laser propagation for inertial fusion systems.

We seek PhD-level experts in plasma physics with strong C++/Python skills, experience with WarpX/LPSE-like tools, and a track record in scalable software development for high-performance computing.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computational Physics, Plasma Physics, Applied Physics, or a closely related field.
• Strong software development skills in C++ and Python.
• Experience developing physics simulation codes with modular architecture and software quality.
• Strong understanding of laser plasma interaction physics and related models.
• Familiarity with numerical methods for PDEs and kinetic plasma simulations.
• Experience using or validating community simulation tools such as PIC or fluid codes.
• Experience leading complex software development efforts.
• U.S. citizen, national, permanent resident, or eligible to work in the U.S.

Responsibilities

• Deploy, configure, and extend simulation tools like WarpX and LPSE for LPI modeling.
• Develop workflows, simulation setups, post-processing, and benchmarking.
• Lead in-house LPI code development focused on collisional kinetics and paraxial propagation.
• Architect modular, scalable scientific software frameworks.
• Implement and validate core physics models including SRS, SBS, CBET and filamentation.
• Perform verification, convergence studies, and benchmarking against data.
• Optimize HPC performance with parallelization for modern architectures.
• Maintain version control, tests, documentation, and reproducibility.
• Collaborate with laser, gas optics, radiation hydrodynamics and experimental teams.
• Contribute to long-term modeling strategy and cross-domain coupling.

Skills

C++

Python

Software architecture

HPC

Plasma physics

LPI

MPI/OpenMP

Team leadership

Education

PhD in Computational Physics

Physics or related field

Tools

WarpX

LPSE

pF3D

PIC codes

Job description

Xcimer Energy is hiring a Laser Plasma Interaction (LPI) Computational Physicist in Denver, CO. You will extend LPI modeling tools and develop in-house software to simulate collisional kinetics and paraxial laser propagation for inertial fusion systems.

We seek PhD-level experts in plasma physics with strong C++/Python skills, experience with WarpX/LPSE-like tools, and a track record in scalable software development for high-performance computing.