---
title: 'Process Safety Engineer at Periodic Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/process-safety-engineer-periodic-labs-menlo-park-kzcpxh3d9mg6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-19'
---

# Process Safety Engineer at Periodic Labs

- **Company:** Periodic Labs
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs/1d57d49b-e538-4d9a-86d3-6be17339016f

## 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

Periodic Labs is building an AI that can simulate science and verify its own predictions — training on the full scientific method. Central to that mission is a high-throughput experimental materials science lab that handles hazardous chemistries, high-pressure and high-temperature processes, air-sensitive synthesis, toxic gas exposure risks, and an expanding suite of thin-film deposition tools including PVD and PLD. The complexity of what we run overnight and autonomously increases every month. We believe EHS is integral to this ambition, not a compliance function bolted on after the fact, but a core design discipline that makes autonomous science possible. This role focuses on operational safety: making sure every new process, tool, and autonomous workflow is hazard-reviewed, safe to start up, and safe to run around the clock. You will also help train our AI to reason about risk during experimental planning and execution.

## What You’ll Do

- Lead and document HAZOPs, PHA/FMEA, and risk assessments for new processes and lab systems, including toxic and pyrophoric material, high-pressure operations, glovebox workflows, and thin-film deposition platforms.
- Establish operational readiness and laboratory reliability systems for autonomous operations, including pre-startup safety reviews (PSSR), management of change (MOC), commissioning validation, alarm rationalization, startup/shutdown procedures, and critical equipment inspection programs.
- Partner with automation and controls teams to implement machine safeguarding, fail-safes, interlocks, robotics safety controls, functional safety validation, safety PLC reviews, and automated motion hazard assessments for autonomous experimental systems.
- Develop and maintain EHS standards, specifications, procedures, and governance systems that can scale across multiple facilities.
- Collaborate with ML/AI engineers on training an LLM to reason through process hazards, risk assessments, and safety constraints during experimental planning and autonomous execution — making EHS a first-class input to our AI’s decision-making.
- Provide technical expertise in high-throughput R&D with a strong focus on chemical safety, including the thin-film lab's specialty gas delivery, vacuum, and RF/high-voltage systems. .
- Lead incident investigations and root cause analyses, own injury reporting and recordkeeping (Cal/OSHA 300 log, serious-injury reporting), and drive corrective actions to closure.
- Assess permitting and MAQ implications of new processes and chemistries across our labs, represent process safety during fire marshal and CUPA inspections, and partner with EHS operations on CERS and BAAQMD compliance.
- Serve as Chemical Hygiene Officer, maintaining the Chemical Hygiene Plan across our labs.

You Will Thrive in This Role If You Have

- 7–10+ years of experience in EHS, process safety, or chemical operations in labs, pilot plants, or semiconductor fabs, preferably with a strong chemistry background (solid-state chemistry, materials processing, or lab automation a plus).
- Hands-on experience leading HAZOPs or FMEAs and running PSSR and MOC programs.
- Working knowledge of functional safety: interlocks, safety PLCs, and ISO 13849 / IEC 61508 concepts.
- Working knowledge of Cal/OSHA, OSHA PELs, ACGIH TLVs/BEIs, NIOSH, and ANSI standards.
- Comfort working on-site in a fast-paced, high-complexity lab environment where experiments run 24/7 and the hazard profile evolves as new processes and equipment are introduced.

Especially Strong Candidates May Also Have

- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Associate Safety Professional (ASP), Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH), or similar credential.
- Experience with semiconductor or thin-film process safety: HF, toxic and pyrophoric gases, gas cabinets, and SEMI S2.
- Experience designing EHS systems for autonomous or semi-autonomous lab environments where processes run without continuous human supervision.
- Familiarity with AI or ML tools as applied to risk assessment, safety documentation, or experimental planning or genuine curiosity about how to apply them.

Mechanics Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or similar experience Location: Menlo Park, CA Compensation: $200,000-250,000 + equity Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.

## 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)

## Other roles at Periodic Labs

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- [Controller](https://feeny.ai/job/controller-periodic-labs-menlo-park-y8xmsezeq3ch) — Menlo Park, CA
- [Automation Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/automation-engineer-periodic-labs-menlo-park-e7a6p1rtctm5) — Menlo Park, CA
- [Research Scientist, Scaling RL](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-scaling-rl-periodic-labs-menlo-park-g9s9gctkbnjs) — Menlo Park, CA / Montréal, Canada
- [Research Scientist/Research Engineer, Midtraining](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-research-engineer-midtraining-periodic-labs-menlo-park-gh5qfkb8vxth) — Menlo Park, CA
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