R&D Computer Scientist

What You Will Do

Come join the brightest minds at the most innovative R&D facility supporting our national security! The Applied Computer Science Group (CAI-1) is looking for Computer Science Researchers interested in bringing new ideas and enthusiasm to tackle interesting and challenging problems in support of both contemporary and emerging processor architectures across a variety of application domains. Our scientists and software engineers research and develop computational methods and software for large‑scale, high‑performance multi‑physics applications.

These applications are routinely run on the largest high‑performance computing (HPC) systems in the world! Our work is often done in collaboration with academia and industry as well as collaborators across the broader Department of Energy community.

CAI-1 is part of the Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CAI) Division, a vibrant scientific research and development organization that works in multiple mission areas of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The division focuses on research and development in artificial intelligence, fundamental computer science, computational physics, algorithms, high‑performance computing, quantum computing, statistics, and applied mathematics.

• Programming
  
  Experience:
  
  Demonstrable experience with intermediate to advanced C/C++ and CUDA programming and using other high‑level programming and scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Lua, Python, or similar). Fundamental awareness of algorithm analysis techniques as well as debugging techniques and a basic understanding of code performance analysis. A basic understanding of parallel programming, including those focused on supporting parallel architectures such as multi‑core CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs.
  
  Basic familiarity with HPC programming environment and hardware. Familiarity with parallel discrete event simulations (PDES) and AI models, including distributed agentic LLM/AI.
• Systems:
  Experience in Unix/Linux‑based software development environments.
• Teamwork:
  Ability to work both independently and collaboratively as part of a technically diverse team.
• Presentations:
  Good oral and written communication skills and the ability to present the results from research and development activities at conferences, workshops, and meetings.
• Education/
  
  Experience:
  
  Positions require a bachelor's degree in a STEM field from an accredited college and university and 4 years of related experience, typically with post‑doctoral research experience at a university or national lab or equivalent experience directly related to the occupation.
• Candidates with a PhD in a relevant field such as Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or similar are preferred.

• Experience developing parallel and distributed memory runtime systems, algorithms, or tools for systems with heterogeneous architectures and complex memory hierarchies.
• Awareness of the effect of low‑level architecture and software layers on code performance (e.g., page faults, NUMA memory access patterns, etc.), and the complexity associated with providing a productive software development environment.
• Experience with hardware simulation or emulation (gem5, sniper, qemu, etc.).
• Experience developing parallel discrete event simulations (PDES) at scale and integrating LLM/AI agentic applications over PDES for extreme scale agent‑based modeling (ABM).
• Experience with modern LLM and AI models, in particular demonstrated ability in modifying LLM architectures to implement novel quantization methods.

This position will be located in Los Alamos with the potential for hybrid or remote work. Hybrid and remote work options are at the discretion of management and can change at any time with appropriate notice.

Regular appointment employees are required to serve a period of continuous service in their current position in order to be eligible to apply for posted jobs throughout the Laboratory. If an employee has not served the time required, they may only apply for Laboratory jobs with the documented approval of their Division Leader. The position commitment for…