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Salary: USD 200,000 - 275,000 / annual
Periodic Labs, an AI and physical sciences company, is seeking an experienced XRD (X-ray diffraction) specialist to manage its in-house materials characterization facility in Menlo Park, CA. You will oversee multiple laboratory diffractometers used for powder, thin-film, and capillary measurements, ensuring optimal performance and reliability across the facility.
Key responsibilities include instrument alignment, calibration, and configuration control to maintain uptime and readiness criteria. You will establish and maintain reference standards and quality control protocols, ensuring consistent results across instruments. The role involves troubleshooting complex, non-routine measurements including weakly scattering samples, air-sensitive materials, thin films, and non-ambient stage work, with careful attention to distinguishing instrument artifacts from real effects.
You will manage preventive maintenance and repairs, coordinate service contracts and vendor visits, and lead the commissioning of new instruments through site preparation, acceptance testing, and comparison against existing equipment. User training and certification of scientists and technicians is a core responsibility, including review of early runs and ongoing support.
Documentation and data management are critical: you will maintain standard operating procedures, measurement recipes, and data-reduction conventions while ensuring raw data, instrument state, calibration status, and sample metadata are recorded consistently in structured formats. You will also manage radiation safety compliance, including X-ray equipment registration, interlock testing, surveys, and handling of compressed gases and cryogens for non-ambient stages.
You will work daily with scientists, technicians, and engineers across synthesis, software, and research teams, and collaborate with the software team to ensure instrument data and metadata integration.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of hands-on experience operating and maintaining X-ray diffractometers in a university shared facility, national lab, analytical services lab, industrial R&D lab, or instrument vendor environment
- Strong XRD background across powder, thin-film, and capillary/transmission work
- Proficiency in phase identification, Rietveld refinement, and quantitative analysis
- Experience maintaining multiple instruments from more than one vendor
- Comfortable troubleshooting hardware and judging when to repair versus call for service
- Careful documentation habits; treats metadata as part of the measurement
- Ability to support many users in a busy lab while maintaining good practice
- PhD in materials science, physics, chemistry, or related field, or equivalent experience
- Preferred: experience managing a shared user facility or commercial XRD lab, automation, or other materials characterization techniques
