Materials Science Expert

Pay: $80–$130/hour

Location: Global, fully remote

Job Type: Contractor (~15 hours per week)

Schedule: Flexible—you choose the hours and days you work, including weekends if desired

We are looking for a highly skilled Materials Science Expert to contribute to an AI training project involving computational materials science, materials modeling, scientific simulation, and Python.

The work involves creating, solving, reviewing, and validating engineering tasks related to material structures, properties, processing, performance, and failure. A representative task may require constructing a material or atomic model, configuring and running a simulation, calculating relevant properties, analyzing the resulting outputs, and determining whether the solution is computationally valid and physically meaningful.

This role requires both strong materials expertise and experience using engineering or scientific tools programmatically. Experience limited exclusively to graphical user interfaces will not be sufficient, as task solutions must be reproducible through code, scripts, configuration files, or command-line tools.

What You’ll Work On

1. Solve and validate computational materials-science and materials-engineering problems.
2. Create material structures, atomic configurations, compositions, and solver-ready inputs.
3. Model relationships between composition, structure, processing, properties, and performance.
4. Run atomistic, electronic-structure, molecular-dynamics, continuum, electrochemical, or related simulations.
5. Use Python to generate inputs, automate calculations, conduct parameter sweeps, process results, and validate outputs.
6. Analyze mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, structural, or electrochemical properties.
7. Diagnose failed calculations, invalid structures, convergence problems, numerical instability, and incorrect physical assumptions.
8. Compare computational results with experimental data, literature values, known properties, or expected physical trends.
9. Review AI-generated solutions for scientific correctness and identify invalid assumptions, configurations, or conclusions.
10. Develop reproducible reference solutions and objective verification methods.

Required Qualifications

1. An MS or PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, Metallurgy, or a closely related discipline; or
2. An MS or PhD in Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering with a substantial materials specialization.
3. Strong understanding of materials behavior and relevant structure-property relationships.
4. Experience with computational materials modeling, simulation, characterization, or materials-focused engineering analysis.
5. Practical proficiency with Python.
6. Experience with at least one engineering or scientific tool that can be operated through a CLI, scripting interface, configuration files, or programmatic API.
7. Ability to understand and justify modeling assumptions, parameters, approximations, and convergence criteria.
8. Ability to distinguish computational failures from genuine physical behavior.
9. Ability to explain complex scientific reasoning and technical limitations clearly.

Relevant tools may include LAMMPS, ASE, pymatgen, Quantum ESPRESSO, FEniCSx, CalculiX, Elmer, PyBaMM, or similar programmatic materials and simulation software. Experience with an equivalent CLI-accessible tool is acceptable.

Relevant Python tools may include NumPy, SciPy, pandas, Matplotlib, Jupyter, atomistic modeling packages, materials informatics libraries, or domain-specific scientific tools. No single library is mandatory.

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