Compute Software Engineer, AI and Advanced Computing Institute

Schmidt Sciences is a nonprofit organization founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that works to accelerate scientific knowledge and breakthroughs with the most promising, advanced tools to support a thriving planet. The organization prioritizes research in areas poised for impact including AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space—as well as supporting researchers in a variety of disciplines through its science systems program.

The AI Institute at Schmidt Sciences is a grantmaking and research group that views AI as a transformative force for scientific discovery and societal progress. Over the next decade, we aim to support key researchers who are working to make AI systems competent, trustworthy, reliable, and able to effectively partner with human scientists on the next generation of discovery. We will also make distinctive investments in beneficial AI areas where philanthropy has a unique advantage.

By supporting enabling infrastructure, foundational research, and targeted programs in science disciplines, the AI and Advanced Computing Institute will create the conditions for AI‑enabled discovery to achieve its promise.

The AI Institute currently has three focus areas:

AI for Science – using AI to improve how scientists generate hypotheses, conduct experiments, analyze data, and produce new knowledge – and do this in a way that specifically accelerates the discovery process. Exploratory programs include post‑transistor hardware for AI and AI for scientific simulation.

Science of AI – understanding and controlling AI systems to mitigate and manage potential risks from advanced AI. Improve AI reliability and performance in areas of limited commercial interest. Existing programs include AI2050 and Science of Trustworthy AI. Exploratory programs include AI interpretability and evolution of multi‑agent communication.

Beneficial AI – providing scientific foundations and datasets for understanding the larger human impacts of AI. This includes selected high‑impact grantmaking, such as our programs to use AI to accelerate humanities research (Humanities and AI Virtual Institute), and to quantify the impact of AI on the labor market (AI@Work).

Schmidt Sciences has multiple programs related to the AI Institute, such as the Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS), which seeks to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery through the support and development of high‑quality, community‑oriented scientific software. These philanthropic efforts support experienced engineers who are tasked with building open‑source infrastructure and applications for multi‑disciplinary, high‑performance, at‑scale scientific discovery.

Reporting to the Compute Program Scientist in the AI Institute, the Software Engineer will provide technical leadership and apply application development expertise across AI Institute and Schmidt Sciences multidisciplinary efforts. The initial set of projects will focus on cutting‑edge developments in AI. A successful candidate should have a work portfolio that reflects specific contributions to production‑grade software products. Success for this role is defined by the quality of software components produced, and the impact of the programming contributions on the overall success of each project.

This role requires up to 30% domestic travel.

• Implementing recently published algorithms or novel data‑processing techniques within an existing application.
• Troubleshooting and evaluating complex software packages for numerical accuracy, finding regressions after refactoring, or adopting existing software libraries for new hardware platforms.
• Instrumenting research software for performance optimization and analysis, especially for large‑scale, distributed workflows.
• Using a combination of open source packages and proprietary APIs to construct scalable AI services using hybrid on‑prem and cloud‑based resources.

Key Responsibilities for this role include the following:

• Select the optimal tools and algorithms to implement solution…