"Computational Research Specialist"

COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST, Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), to support the development of FESTIM, an open-source finite element modeling platform for tritium transport in fusion energy systems. The position is part of a broader initiative to enhance the verification, validation, and usability of high-impact research software tools that support international fusion research. Will lead efforts to expand FESTIM's verification and validation (V&V) framework including writing unit tests, performing convergence studies, and implementing automated comparison against analytical solutions and experimental benchmarks; maintain and improve the online documentation infrastructure, including Jupyter Book and ReadTheDocs platforms; design and publish high-quality tutorials, examples, and user guides; enhance FESTIM's development workflow with continuous integration pipelines, coding standards, and code review practices; engage with external users via GitHub discussions and issue tracking; work closely with faculty, postdocs, students, and external collaborators to identify improvements to usability, performance, and accuracy; integrate user feedback into development priorities; and implement new features, maintain existing capabilities, and refactor components as needed to support performance, scalability, and extensibility.

REQUIRED: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field; a minimum of two years of experience in scientific computing, open-source development, or research software engineering; strong programming skills in Python; familiarity with Git/GitHub version control systems; experience with documentation platforms such as Sphinx or Jupyter Book; experience with or willingness to learn automated testing and CI/CD tools (e.g., GitHub Actions); strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to work collaboratively and independently and to deal with confidential information and/or issues using discretion. PREFERRED: Master's degree.

Occasional travel to domestic or international scientific meetings may be required.

The pay range for this position is $60,000-$80,000, based on related experience and expertise.

This is a one-year term appointment with the possibility of renewal.