---
title: 'Software Engineer, Scientific Computing at Vorticity Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-scientific-computing-vorticity-inc-redwood-city-8jhspwzmy5fs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Software Engineer, Scientific Computing at Vorticity Inc.

- **Company:** Vorticity Inc.
- **Location:** Redwood City, CA
- **Compensation:** $130k–$190k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/vorticity/4619a349-3c81-46d1-bb5b-5fbf7bd5e360

## Job description

Vorticity is building new scientific computing technology for some of the world’s most challenging problems. We are looking for a Software Engineer to join our Applications team. You will work across mathematics, physics, and computer science to build, test, and improve scientific computing applications running on CPUs and GPUs.

This is a broad role on a small team. We are looking for someone who is smart, curious, practical, and excited to learn quickly and build useful technology. The right candidate does not need experience in any particular scientific domain. They should be interested in scientific computing and comfortable working on unfamiliar, multidisciplinary problems.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Develop scientific computing applications and numerical methods.
- Measure, debug, optimize, and improve computational performance.
- Work across research, software engineering, testing, and deployment.
- Contribute wherever needed as the technology and team evolve.

## REQUIREMENTS

- Bachelor’s degree or higher in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, or another relevant technical field.
- Strong Python programming skills.
- A strong foundation in mathematics, physics, and computer science.
- Ability to operate at multiple levels of abstraction in a complex software system.
- Comfort working across disciplines and tackling unfamiliar problems.

## PREFERRED SKILLS

- Experience with CUDA or another GPU programming environment.
- Familiarity with scientific computing, numerical methods, simulations, signal processing, or inverse problems.
- Experience developing and maintaining production software.

Our Applications team builds scientific software on existing computing hardware while working closely with the broader company as we develop our own Scientific Processing Unit.

As passionate scientists and engineers, we are well aware of the plethora of critical problems in the world that cannot be solved because humanity simply does not have enough computing power. To address this, Vorticity is developing a radically new silicon chip architecture and system to dramatically accelerate scientific computing problems.

Vorticity’s mission is to expand human ingenuity. To do that we are building a team of exceptional people to work together on big problems. Join us!

## About Vorticity Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Vorticity is re-imagining scientific computing from custom-built software all the way down to processor architecture, creating a new chip and system purpose-built to accelerate physics-based simulation and data-intensive computation for industries like aerospace, energy, and life sciences.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A, 2022 – amount undisclosed; previously raised Y Combinator pre-seed and seed rounds totaling $275K)
- **Headquarters**: Redwood City, California, USA (with additional offices in Mountain View and San Mateo)
- **Founded**: 2019 (Y Combinator Summer 2019 batch)
- **Founders**: Chirath Neranjena (also known as Chirath N.) – aerospace engineer, private pilot, and former Idealab/Y Combinator founder.

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Scientific Computing, High-Performance Computing (HPC), Semiconductor Design, Deep Tech
- **Target customers**: B2B / Enterprise – aerospace & defense, energy (oil & gas, fusion), geophysics, life sciences (drug discovery, molecular dynamics), financial modeling
- **Mission statement**: “Expanding human ingenuity by making the impossible solvable” – building the hardware and software foundation to push the boundaries of what humanity can achieve through faster scientific compute.

## Products & Services
- **[Pyrite9 Scientific Processing Unit (SPU)]**: Purpose-built silicon that replaces GPUs for scientific compute, achieving 10x–1000x speedups for solving large-scale partial differential equations (PDEs). The architecture is paired with a custom software stack and distributed system designed for cloud-accessible simulation.
- **Full-Stack Simulation Platform**: End-to-end solution from custom processor to cloud-accessible software, enabling scientists and engineers to run high-fidelity simulations (e.g., molecular dynamics, hypersonic flight, mineral exploration) without needing supercomputers.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total disclosed funding ~$275K (pre-seed and seed from Y Combinator; Series A in 2022 led by an undisclosed investor). Annual revenue not disclosed.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (summer 2019 batch) is the most prominent early investor; Series A investor(s) not named.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Workforce: ~7–10 employees (LinkedIn reports 7, YC reports team size 10) with a ~100% increase in job postings year-over-year as of mid-2025.
  - Expanding into defense, energy, and life sciences with proven technology already deployed in industrial settings.
  - Growing LinkedIn follower count (+21.8% YoY) indicating rising brand awareness in the HPC community.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Custom architecture designed from the ground up for scientific computing** – unlike GPUs (optimized for AI/graphics), the Pyrite9 SPU is built specifically to solve PDEs and run physics simulations at orders-of-magnitude higher throughput.
- **Full-stack ownership** (silicon, compiler, runtime, distributed system) allows deep optimization and tight integration that commodity hardware cannot match.
- **Proven 10x–1000x speedups** over existing solutions, reducing months of compute time to days or hours.
- **Strong moat in national security**: Positioned as a strategic imperative for U.S. scientific computing, with potential government and defense contracts.

## Strategic Focus
- **Advancing U.S. scientific computing** – strengthening the nation’s ability to simulate physical systems for defense, energy independence, and medical breakthroughs.
- **Scaling from prototype to production** – moving past early deployments to broader commercial adoption in aerospace, energy, and life sciences.
- **Expanding the platform** – developing additional layers of software and cloud infrastructure to make scientific computing accessible and scalable for enterprise customers.
- **Hiring across hardware and software** – actively recruiting kernel engineers, applied math library engineers, and other roles to accelerate product development.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: Tackle one of humanity’s hardest problems – unlocking compute for areas like fusion, drug discovery, and hypersonics. Employees report high alignment with the company’s vision of expanding human ingenuity.
- **On-site culture**: Employees work from physical offices in Redwood City and Mountain View. The environment is collaborative, with free daily meals, pet-friendly offices, and onsite parking.
- **Compensation & benefits**: Unlimited PTO, equity (0.25%–0.50% for early hires), performance bonuses, 401(k) with match, comprehensive health/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, and retirement planning support.
- **Tight-knit team**: Small company (under 15 people) where each engineer has outsized impact. The tech stack spans C++, Python, CUDA, SystemVerilog, and Kubernetes – offering exposure to cutting-edge hardware and low-level software.
- **Career growth**: In an early-stage deep-tech startup, employees can grow quickly as the company scales. Recent job postings for kernel and math library engineers indicate a ramp-up in technical hiring.

## Sources
1. [Vorticity Official Website](https://vorticity.xyz)
2. [Vorticity Careers Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/vorticity)
3. [Built In – Vorticity Profile](https://builtin.com/company/vorticity)
4. [Y Combinator – Vorticity](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/vorticity)
5. [LinkedIn – Vorticity Inc.](https://www.linkedin.com/company/vorticityinc)

## Other roles at Vorticity Inc.

- [Software Engineer, Parallel Scientific Computing](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-parallel-scientific-computing-vorticity-inc-redwood-city-cyn3k63c2ymw) — Redwood City, CA