R&D Engineering, Staff Engineer

Synopsys; Livermore (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Synopsys is seeking a senior computational mechanics software engineer to advance LS-DYNA solvers for automotive, aerospace, and civil engineering applications. The role focuses on performance, scalability, and accuracy on massive HPC clusters and GPU-accelerated systems.

You will port and optimize SPH/Cd algorithms, develop meshfree and FE methods, and collaborate with ACE engineers and customers to deliver production-ready fixes. Hybrid work in Livermore, CA is supported.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• 4-5+ years of hands-on experience developing computational mechanics software or HPC simulation tools.
• Strong proficiency in Fortran, C, and C++ for performance-critical scientific computing.
• Demonstrated experience with parallel programming using OpenMP and MPI in production codebases.
• Solid understanding of finite element methods, meshfree methods, or computational dynamics.
• Experience with GPU programming using CUDA, OpenACC, or OpenMP Offload is a strong plus.
• Familiarity with profiling and debugging tools for parallel and GPU-accelerated applications is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Develop, optimize, and maintain LS-DYNA solvers and features including CPG, CPM, SPH, DEM, PBM, and EGMM methods
• Contribute to the development of meshfree and finite element methods that balance accuracy, stability, and computational efficiency
• Port SPH and other performance-critical features from CPU to GPU using OpenACC, OpenMP Offload, and CUDA
• Debug and resolve consistency issues in LS-DYNA HYBRID on large-scale customer models where identical inputs must produce identical results regardless of thread count or CPU allocation
• Implement and optimize parallel algorithms using OpenMP and MPI for distributed memory and shared memory systems
• Profile, benchmark, and tune code performance on HPC clusters and GPU-accelerated systems
• Collaborate with ACE engineers and customers to translate requirements into software solutions, diagnosing simulation issues and delivering fixes that hold up in production environments

Skills

Fortran

C

C++

OpenMP

MPI

CUDA

OpenACC

GPU programming

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, or related field

Tools

CUDA

OpenACC

OpenMP Offload

OpenMP

MPI

Job description

Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow.

You Are

You have spent years building computational mechanics software that engineers actually depend on to simulate real-world physics, not toy problems, but production simulations running on massive clusters where performance and accuracy both matter. The difference between code that scales to thousands of cores and code that stalls out is something you understand at the implementation level, not just in theory. You have debugged parallel code that behaves differently on different architectures, and you know how to trace that back to a memory access pattern or a communication bottleneck that no profiler flagged.

Moving work from CPU to GPU is not a buzzword exercise for you. You have done it. You know what translates cleanly and what requires rethinking the algorithm entirely. Designing and extending mechanics software within large Fortran and C codebases is familiar territory. You are comfortable in code that predates modern tooling, and understand the underlying physics and numerical algorithms needed for complex engineering simulations. OpenMP, MPI, CUDA, OpenACC: these are not resume keywords, they are tools you reach for depending on the problem.

At Synopsys, you will work on LS-DYNA, software that powers crash simulations, structural analysis, and complex dynamics problems across automotive, aerospace, and civil engineering. The team is small, the problems are hard, and what you build will run on some of the largest supercomputers in the world.

What You'll Be Doing

Develop, optimize, and maintain LS-DYNA solvers and features including CPG, CPM, SPH, DEM, PBM, and EGMM methods

Contribute to the development of meshfree and finite element methods that balance accuracy, stability, and computational efficiency

• Port SPH and other performance-critical features from CPU to GPU using OpenACC, OpenMP Offload, and CUDA
• Debug and resolve consistency issues in LS-DYNA HYBRID on large-scale customer models where identical inputs must produce identical results regardless of thread count or CPU allocation
• Implement and optimize parallel algorithms using OpenMP and MPI for distributed memory and shared memory systems
• Profile, benchmark, and tune code performance on HPC clusters and GPU-accelerated systems
• Collaborate with ACE engineers and customers to translate requirements into software solutions, diagnosing simulation issues and delivering fixes that hold up in production environments

The Impact You Will Have

Reduce simulation runtime for automotive crash models by porting SPH solvers to GPU, enabling faster design iteration cycles for customers

Implement novel numerical techniques to enable customers to solve increasingly complex engineering challenges

• Resolve consistency and accuracy issues in HYBRID solvers that directly affect customer confidence in simulation results, ensuring production runs scale reliably across varying compute resources
• Improve scalability of LS-DYNA on next-generation HPC architectures, ensuring the software remains competitive as hardware evolves
• Deliver performance improvements that allow engineers to run larger, more detailed models without requiring additional compute resources
• Contribute to the long-term maintainability and robustness of a codebase used by thousands of engineers worldwide
• Help customers move critical workloads to modern HPC platforms, reducing their time to insight and increasing their R&D throughput

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's or Master's in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, or related field
• 4-5+ years of hands-on experience developing computational mechanics software or HPC simulation tools
• Strong proficiency in Fortran, C, and C++ for performance-critical scientific computing
• Demonstrated experience with parallel programming using OpenMP and MPI in production codebases
• Solid understanding of finite element methods, meshfree methods, or computational dynamics
• Experience with GPU programming using CUDA, OpenACC, or OpenMP Offload is a strong plus
• Familiarity with profiling and debugging tools for parallel and GPU-accelerated applications is a plus

Who You Are

• You have experience designing, implementing, and extending mechanics software and are comfortable working within large Fortran and C codebases
• You can collaborate effectively with customers and colleagues to translate customer requirements into software solutions
• You know how to isolate a performance bottleneck and propose a fix that improves runtime without sacrificing correctness
• You are willing to work hybrid in Livermore, CA, three days per week in the office with a team of six engineers who care deeply about the quality of the code they ship

The Team You'll Be Part Of

You will join a team of six engineers working on the Ansys Mechanical Product within Synopsys. The team focuses on CPG, CPM, SPH, DEM, PBM, EGMM solvers, HPC optimization, GPU acceleration, and benchmarking. You will collaborate closely with the ACE (Application and Customer Engineering) team, who handle most customer issues, but you will also work directly with customers when technical problems require deeper solver-level investigation. This is an individual contributor role working on LS-DYNA, one of the most widely used explicit dynamics simulation platforms in the world.

Rewards and Benefits

We offer a comprehensive range of health, wellness, and financial benefits to cater to your needs. Our total rewards include both monetary and non-monetary offerings.

#LI-TS5

At Synopsys, we want talented people of every background to feel valued and supported to do their best work. Synopsys considers all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, military veteran status, or disability.

In addition to the base salary, this role may be eligible for an annual bonus, equity, and other discretionary bonuses. Synopsys offers comprehensive health, wellness, and financial benefits as part of a competitive total rewards package. The actual compensation offered will be based on a number of job-related factors, including location, skills, experience, and education. The base salary range for this role is across the U.S.