Overview

About Periodic Labs

Periodic Labs is an AI + physical sciences lab focused on building state-of-the-art models to enable novel scientific discoveries. The company is well funded and growing rapidly. Team members act as owners who identify and solve problems without boundaries or bureaucracy, eagerly learning new tools and science to advance their mission.

About the Role

The role involves building and scaling the Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) that orchestrate an automated materials synthesis lab. Responsibilities include owning scheduling, workflow, and data provenance systems coordinating dozens of instruments (furnaces, dispensers, diffractometers, etc.) to synthesize novel materials at scale. The role requires building workflow orchestration for multi-step synthesis pipelines and instrument scheduling systems that manage contention, priorities, and batching across shared equipment. Ensuring full attribution with complete lineage tracking for every sample action is essential. The work spans the full stack—Python backend, React frontend, Kubernetes infrastructure—to develop reliable production systems with minimal intervention. Collaboration with the engineering lead is expected to scale the lab automation platform as instrument count and experiment throughput grow.

Ideal Experience

• Building production MES, LIMS, ERP, or process control systems with high correctness requirements
• Workflow/DAG orchestration
• Data modeling for audit and provenance use cases
• Concurrent systems: resource locking, scheduling, contention handling
• Powder synthesis, ceramics, or materials manufacturing environments
• Scheduling algorithms for shared resources with constraints
• Event sourcing or append-only data architectures