Domain Specialist

**Domain Specialist**

Abingdon Rd, Culham, UK
Full-time

**Salary**: £52,293 (inclusive of MPP) + excellent benefits including outstanding pension
Site Location: UKAEA Culham, Oxfordshire
Confirmed Grade: Level 5
Department: Computing Division

**Company Description**

By 2050, the planet could be using twice as much electricity compared to today. Are you interested in contributing and helping to shape the future of the world’s energy? If so, read on.

Fusion, the process that powers the Sun and Stars, is one of the most promising options for generating the cleaner, carbon-free energy that our world badly needs.

UKAEA leads the way in realizing fusion energy, partnering with industry and research for groundbreaking advancements. Our goal is to bring fusion electricity to the grid, supported by tomorrow's power stations. In pursuit of our mission, UKAEA embraces core values: Innovative, Committed, Trusted, and Collaborative.

As an employee of UKAEA you will benefit from:

- Outstanding **defined benefit pension scheme, details of which can be found at the end of this advert**:

- Corporate **bonus scheme up to 7%** and a **Relocation** allowance (if eligible)
- **Flexible working options** including family friendly policies
- **Employee Assistance Programme** and trained Mental Health First Aiders
- **Emergency** paid **leave**:

- Generous **annual leave allowance** (30.5 days) increased with length of service
- Wide range of **career development opportunities**:

- A vibrant **culture** committed to being fully **inclusive**

**Who are we looking for?**

We are currently seeking someone who is passionate about writing performant, well designed and rigorously tested scientific software for HPC. This role involves solving a combination of maths, physics, and computing problems alongside a dedicated multi-disciplinary team. As a key expert on your projects, you bring in-depth expertise to the table. You will give input in planning, report to stakeholders and offer guidance to more junior teammates.

Your experience will place you somewhere between numerical plasma physicist (or related fields e.g. CFD) and C++ expert, perhaps from the games, finance or engineering industries. You will bring strong skills associated with writing performance critical code, ideally with a background in GPU programming. Making numerically robust, user-friendly software with modern open-source practices is second nature to you. As this is a senior role, you will be comfortable teaching others with complementary backgrounds, whilst being eager and open in your own inter-disciplinary development. Knowledge of any of the following is also of great benefit: finite elements; SYCL; MPI; computational fluid dynamics; Monte Carlo particle methods; code generation; uncertainty quantification; and surrogates.

**What will you be responsible for?**
- Design, implement, optimise and deliver actionable software for tokamak design
- Research cutting edge numerics and computational frameworks, and integrate them into new and existing Software
- Support and provide technical leadership to physicists, engineers and managers
- Act as key resource on projects of moderate scale and/or complexity
- Perform business development activities including networking and writing bids

We are flexible on the working hours and open for part time workers as well.

**Qualifications**

**Essential skills, experience and competence required**
- A doctorate degree in a computational, mathematical, or physical science discipline, or equivalent experience in commercial or research settings
- Demonstrable expertise in a compiled-level language (e.g., C++, Fortran, C, Rust) or advanced scripting language (Julia, R, Swift Parallel Scripting)
- Experience in agile project management and practical software development practices
- Strong mathematics foundation, particularly in numerical analysis, evidenced by publications or contributions to relevant software libraries
- Expertise in developing and implementing verification and validation strategies, with the ability to assess new algorithms for fusion-based codes
- Significant experience in parallel programming techniques (e.g., MPI, OpenMP), including design, construction, and use of codes at petascale and beyond

**Desirable skills, experience and competence**
- Experience writing SYCL code or equivalent performance portability framework
- Familiarity with and experience in the use of either or both commercial (e.g. ANSYS, CATIA) or open (e.g MOOSE, GMSH, Nekar++) software packages supporting engineering design
- An interest and knowledge of Uncertainty Quantification and its impact on design solutions

**Additional Information**

A full list of our benefits can be found on our website.

All employees at the UK Atomic Energy Authority must complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) and other appropriate security checks, including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convicti