---
title: 'Equipment Engineer at Periodic Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/equipment-engineer-periodic-labs-menlo-park-27e2ekxdqtbm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-21'
---

# Equipment Engineer at Periodic Labs

- **Company:** Periodic Labs
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-21
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs/489cf02a-3098-4b41-b985-7e718f963ad5

## Job description

## About Periodic Labs

We're an AI and physical sciences company building state-of-the-art models to accelerate breakthroughs across materials, energy, and beyond. Backed by world-class investors and growing rapidly, we operate at the pace the frontier requires. Our team brings deep expertise, genuine ownership, and an insatiable drive to push the boundaries of what's scientifically possible.

## About the Role

As an Equipment Engineer, you will own the commissioning, qualification, and maintenance of the vacuum and deposition hardware that powers our AI-accelerated thin-film and semiconductor processing lab. You will commission, qualify, and maintain R&D thin-film deposition systems, including but not limited to PVD, CVD, and ALD, working closely with vendors to assemble, install, and bring tools online, and troubleshoot complex vacuum and process-hardware issues at the equipment level. You will also be hands-on in bringing up new tools and reactors, integrating in-situ characterization and metrology capabilities, writing equipment specifications and SOPs, and working closely with vendors to procure and qualify capital equipment. In this role, you will collaborate daily with internal teams spanning AI/ML, simulation, process engineering, and physics/chemistry to stand up scalable lab infrastructure for high-value problems.

## What You'll Do

- Lab Development: Contribute to the buildout and scale-up of an AI-accelerated thin-film and semiconductor processing laboratory, including commissioning deposition systems and integrating in-situ characterization and metrology tools, enabling scientists to pursue materials discovery.
- Equipment Qualification & Troubleshooting: Establish equipment specifications, acceptance criteria, and qualification protocols for new tools; diagnose and resolve complex hardware, vacuum, and process-equipment failures.
- Vendor & Procurement Engagement: Contribute to vendor communication and tool selection, providing technical requirements to vendors and supporting bid evaluation and technical negotiation, in coordination with the procurement team.
- Documentation & Data: Create internal and external documentation, equipment SOPs, strategies, and technical reports, and establish standardized equipment data pipelines to feed into AI training infrastructure.
- Equipment Reliability & Uptime: Own day-to-day equipment health and prioritize tool availability by proactively monitoring performance, troubleshooting hardware and process issues, performing root-cause analysis, and working directly with vendors to resolve failures quickly and prevent recurrence.

You Will Thrive in This Role If You Have

- BS, MS, or PhD in Engineering (Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical), Materials Science, or a related field.
- Extensive hands-on experience with vacuum systems in a semiconductor, nanofabrication, or advanced materials setting.
- Deep expertise in high-vacuum system operation and the underlying mechanisms of deposition hardware, including plasma sources, gas delivery, and thermal management.
- Experience integrating characterization and metrology capabilities directly into process equipment (e.g., in-situ metrology, environmental chambers).
- Startup-ready mindset: able to operate effectively in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment while implementing industry-standard best practices.

Mechanics

- Type: Full-time
- Location: On-site in Menlo Park, CA. This role cannot be performed remotely.
- Schedule: Standard weekday schedule.
- Compensation: $200K to $275K, plus equity, commensurate with experience.
- Work authorization: Must be authorized to work in the U.S.; visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates.

## About Periodic Labs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Periodic Labs is building AI scientists and autonomous laboratories to accelerate scientific discovery in the physical sciences, starting with materials design and semiconductor research.
- **Entity Type**: Private (seed-stage, $300M total funding raised in 2025)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (primary) and Menlo Park, California, USA (dual locations) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Founded**: 2025 [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Founders**: Ekin Dogus Cubuk (Co-Founder) and other undisclosed founding team members with backgrounds at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs), [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Physical sciences R&D, artificial intelligence, autonomous laboratory systems
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises in semiconductor manufacturing, materials science, energy, and other deep-tech sectors requiring experimental research
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Our goal is to create an AI scientist” that can autonomously hypothesize, run experiments, and learn from results to discover new materials and accelerate technological progress [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Products & Services
- **AI Scientist**: A suite of AI models trained to generate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret results across physical science domains.
- **Autonomous Laboratories**: Fully automated, high-throughput experimental platforms that produce large volumes of high-quality data (including negative results) to train AI models. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **Custom Agents for Industry**: Tailored AI agents for engineers and researchers, e.g., helping a semiconductor manufacturer analyze heat dissipation data to accelerate iteration. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private seed-stage company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $300M in a single seed round (2025) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: a16z, Felicis, DST, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Accel, Emerson Collective, Fellows Fund, Coatue; individual backers include Jeff Bezos, Elad Gil, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Dean. Also collaborating with academic advisors from Stanford, Northwestern, and more. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/), [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Growth Signals**: 40 employees as of mid-2026, with monthly headcount growth of +19.6% and 25 active job postings (+47.1% quarterly growth) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary data generation**: Autonomous labs produce massive, unique datasets (including valuable negative results) that do not exist in public literature, creating a data moat.
- **Founding team pedigree**: Core team co-created ChatGPT, DeepMind’s GNoME, OpenAI’s Operator (Agent), MatterGen, and scaled autonomous physics labs – rare concentration of AI + science talent. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **End-to-end integration**: AI models, simulation, and physical experimentation are all in-house, enabling rapid closed-loop learning.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale autonomous labs**: Expand capacity to generate experimental data across multiple physical science domains.
- **Target high-impact problems**: Superconductor discovery, semiconductor heat dissipation, and other materials challenges that can unlock Moore’s Law, advanced energy grids, and space travel. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **Develop the first generation of AI scientists**: Train models that can operate independently of human input across the entire scientific method.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “From bits to atoms” – a deep-tech startup blending frontier AI with hands-on lab work. Emphasis on rapid iteration and real-world impact.
- **Work policy**: In-office preferred; primary offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, CA. Most roles are on-site. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Notable perks**: Work alongside world-class AI researchers and experimental scientists; access to cutting-edge automated lab equipment; early-stage equity and high-growth trajectory.
- **Engineering culture**: 34% of employees are in technical roles; talent sourced from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, and Stanford – strong peer learning environment. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)

## Sources
1. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/periodic-labs)
3. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs)

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