Thermodynamic Hardware Residency

Normal Computing Corporation; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 60,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Normal Computing invites exceptional researchers and engineers to join its Thermodynamic Hardware Residency, a flagship program at the frontier of unconventional computing. Residents work closely with a dedicated mentor, tackling real hardware challenges at the hardware-software boundary, and co-author papers as they map a path toward future contributions.

You will experience startup pace, contribute to landmark experiments, and present findings at a program-wide colloquium, with strong

Qualifications

• Pursuing/holding MS or PhD in a relevant field with hardware focus.
• Experience with hardware, device physics, or analog computing.
• Strong programming in Python; familiarity with C++ or Rust is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Work hands-on with thermodynamic hardware: design, simulate, characterize.
• Design numerical methods for a new substrate leveraging thermal noise and analog dynamics.
• Drive a research question from device physics to ML workloads on hardware.
• Build evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for hardware and simulations.
• Co-author a research paper and prepare for publication with mentorship.
• Present findings at the residency colloquium and receive feedback from the team.
• Experience startup pace with founders and researchers in a lean, fast-moving environment.

Skills

Python

C++

Rust

Hardware simulation

Education

MS or PhD in physics, EE, CE, CS, applied math

Tools

SPICE

PyTorch

FPGA tooling

ASIC tooling

Job description

Normal Computing | Build with Us

Normal is an applied AI company solving the hardest problems in AI and silicon. We build foundational hardware and software for the semiconductor industry, critical AI infrastructure, and the broader systems that power our world, in partnership with the world’s most advanced institutions. We work as one team across New York City, San Francisco, London, Copenhagen, and Pangyo.

The Residency Program

The Thermodynamic Hardware Residency is Normal Computing’s flagship program for exceptional researchers and engineers who want to work at the frontier of unconventional computing. Residents join a small, hand-picked cohort with a dedicated research mentor, direct access to the team building our cutting-edge thermodynamic hardware, and a clear arc from onboarding through publication.

Every residency is built around two milestones that mark you as part of something bigger than a single project: a research paper co-authored with our team, and a company-wide research colloquium where you present your findings to the full Normal Computing organization. You’ll leave with a body of published, presented work, and a standing as one of the earliest residents to help define what this program becomes. Exceptional performers will be considered for full-time conversion at the end of the residency.

Your Normal Experience

• You’ll spend your residency embedded with the team building and characterizing our unconventional, thermodynamic computing hardware — silicon that exploits physical noise and analog dynamics rather than fighting them.

• This is a hands-on research residency: you’ll take ownership of a real technical problem at the boundary of physics, hardware, and machine learning, work alongside the researchers and engineers building our hardware, and be expected to contribute ideas, not just execute someone else’s.

• Our hardware is designed to deliver orders-of-magnitude more AI inference per dollar, per watt than conventional GPU s — not by porting existing GPU kernels onto new chips, but by rethinking how core operations work when the substrate itself is stochastic analog computation in memory rather than conventional digital logic. That rethinking, from device physics up through algorithms, is exactly the kind of problem residents take on.

• You’ll get direct exposure to the pace, ambiguity, and speed of decision-making that comes with working at a fast-moving, well-funded hardware startup — where the distance between an idea on a whiteboard and a test on real silicon is measured in weeks, not years.

What You’ll Do

• Work hands-on with thermodynamic hardware. Help design, simulate, characterize, or evaluate our hardware, where noise, analog dynamics, and in-memory computation are first-class design elements rather than sources of error to be engineered away.

• Design numerical methods for a new substrate. Explore algorithms and numerical methods that exploit thermal noise and analog dynamics directly, rather than adapting techniques built for conventional digital hardware.

• Drive a research question of your own. Partner with researchers and hardware engineers to scope, run, and iterate on an original technical investigation — from device- or circuit-level physics up to algorithms and workloads that map onto thermodynamic compute.

• Build evaluation frameworks and benchmarks. Help build the tests and benchmarks that measure how algorithmic ideas actually perform on real hardware and in simulation, and feed what you learn about model workloads back into hardware design decisions.

• Co-author a paper. Work with the team to write up your findings for submission to a relevant venue, with mentorship on framing, experiments, and technical writing along the way — one of the two milestones every resident builds toward.

• Present at the residency colloquium. Share your work and thinking with the broader Normal Computing research community at the program’s capstone event, and get real-time feedback from people building this technology every day.

• Experience startup pace firsthand. Work directly with founders, senior researchers, and engineers in a lean, fast-moving environment where priorities shift quickly and your work has an outsized, visible impact.

What Would Make You a Great Fit

• Currently pursuing or recently completed a graduate degree (MS or PhD, or equivalent research experience) in physics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, applied math, or a related field — with a focus on hardware, device physics, stochastic or analog computing, or machine learning systems.

• Comfortable moving between levels of abstraction: from the physics of noise and analog devices, to circuit- and architecture-level tradeoffs, to the algorithms and workloads that will eventually run on this hardware.

• Some exposure to large-model inference concepts — attention mechanisms, KV caching, long-context decoding — and an interest in how they change when the underlying hardware isn’t a GPU. Production-level experience isn’t expected at the resident level, but the intuition should feel familiar.

• Strong Python skills, plus comfort with (or eagerness to learn) a lower-level systems language such as C++ or Rust; hands-on experience with simulation, experimentation, or hardware characterization (e.g., SPICE, PyTorch, FPGA or ASIC tooling) is a plus.

• First-principles reasoning about novel computational substrates: a genuine curiosity about unconventional computing, where exploiting thermal noise rather than suppressing it sounds more interesting than intimidating.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; prior experience writing up research (papers, theses, technical reports) is a plus, as is any experience presenting technical work to a live audience.

• A bias toward ownership and self-direction: you’re energized, not overwhelmed, by the ambiguity and speed of a small, fast-moving startup.

_ Equal Employment Opportunity Statement _

Normal Computing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.

_ Accessibility Accommodations _

Normal Computing is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let us know at [e-mail].

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