STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, Cheshire, UK

Salary: £39,748 - £44,166 (dependent on skills and experience)

Plus a recruitment and retention allowance of up to £4,000 per annum

Fixed Term (30 Months)

We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Computational Scientist in the Scientific Computing Department at STFC, to join the team developing the ChemShell multiscale computational chemistry environment. Your research will explore the potential to use quantum computers alongside conventional high performance computing (HPC) to transform how chemical simulations are performed.

About Us

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is one of Europe's largest research organisations and part of UKRI (United Kingdom Research & Innovation). STFC’s Scientific Computing Department is home to over 200 computational scientists, software engineers and support staff, with world-leading capabilities in scientific software research and development, data-intensive science, analysis, visualisation and simulation.

About the Role

The research forms part of the £4.7m Quantum Enhanced Computing Platform for Pharmaceutical R&D (QuPharma) project. STFC are working with a large consortium of commercial and academic partners on the development of a new platform that will leverage emerging quantum computing technologies to accelerate the drug discovery process. A key component of this platform will be the ChemShell software package developed in the Scientific Computing Department (www.chemshell.org).

Your research will involve investigating and implementing algorithms to enable quantum chemistry calculations on quantum computers to be embedded inside multiscale quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) calculations. The aim is to produce a highly flexible “Quantum Enhanced” version of ChemShell that can adapt to the latest quantum computers as they grow more powerful over time, while retaining the ability to simulate realistic biomolecular systems for pharmaceutical applications through hybrid multiscale methods.

About You

You will have a PhD (or equivalent experience) in a physical science or other relevant discipline, and a track record of scientific software development. A background in computational chemistry research is highly desirable, especially electronic structure or multiscale QM/MM method developments. You will have practical experience of running scientific simulations on HPC platforms, and have the excellent written and verbal communication skills needed to work with our collaborators and present your research to other scientists. Previous experience of quantum computing is beneficial, but not necessary for the role.

Shortlisted candidates will be asked to provide a relevant sample of code they have written.

Please visit our job board for the full job specification:

https://www.careersportal.co.uk/UKRI-careers/jobs/senior-computational-scientist-qm-mm-methods-1966

For informal enquiries about this position, please contact Thomas Keal ([email protected]).

Employee Benefits

We provide a whole host of employee benefits including 30 days holiday (in addition to bank holidays), an excellent pension scheme, employee shopping/travel discounts, a salary sacrifice cycle to work scheme, and many more benefits and wellbeing initiatives that enable our employees to have an excellent work-life balance.

UKRI is an Equal Opportunity & Disability Confident Employer.

Closing Date: 9 June 2022

Interviews will be held on Zoom in mid/late June.