---
title: 'XRD Facility Manager at Periodic Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/xrd-facility-manager-periodic-labs-menlo-park-artzbwnnmkjx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-21'
---

# XRD Facility Manager at Periodic Labs

- **Company:** Periodic Labs
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-21
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs/e82a30cb-ad71-402f-b1c2-1b762fc50bfe

## Job description

## About Periodic Labs

Periodic Labs is an AI and physical sciences company in Menlo Park, CA. We run an in-house materials synthesis and characterization lab alongside our research teams.

## About the role

We are looking for an experienced diffraction specialist to manage our X-ray diffraction facility, which includes multiple laboratory diffractometers used for powder, thin-film, and capillary measurements. You will be responsible for instrument alignment and calibration, preventive maintenance and repair, user training, measurement standards, radiation safety, and overall attention to the performance of the X-ray equipment. You will also help specify and commission new instruments, write the SOPs and qualification protocols the group works from, and work with our software team so that instrument data and metadata are recorded consistently. You will work daily with scientists, technicians, and engineers across synthesis, software, and research.

## Responsibilities

- Instrument alignment, calibration, configuration control, and uptime across the facility, including the criteria used to decide whether an instrument is ready for use.
- Reference standards and quality control: maintain house standards and a regular QC schedule so that the same standard gives consistent results across instruments
- Difficult measurements: non-routine geometries, weakly scattering or air-sensitive samples, thin films, and non-ambient stages, with attention to distinguishing instrument artifacts from real effects.
- Maintenance and repair: troubleshooting and preventive maintenance; coordination of service contracts and vendor visits when needed.
- Commissioning new instruments: site preparation, acceptance testing, and comparison against existing instruments.
- User training: train and certify scientists and technicians, review early runs, and provide support.
- Documentation and data: maintain SOPs, measurement recipes, and data-reduction conventions; ensure raw data, instrument state, calibration status, and sample metadata are recorded consistently and in a structured format.
- Radiation safety: X-ray equipment registration and compliance, interlock testing, surveys, along with compressed gas and cryogen handling for non-ambient stages.

## Qualifications

- 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 at an instrument vendor.
- Strong XRD background across powder, thin-film, and capillary/transmission work. Proficient in phase identification, Rietveld refinement, and quantitative analysis.
- Experience maintaining several instruments, ideally 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.
- Able to support many users in a busy lab while maintaining good practice.
- PhD in materials science, physics, chemistry, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred: experience managing a shared user facility or commercial XRD lab, automation, or other materials characterization techniques.

Mechanics

- Type: Full-time
- Location: On-site in Menlo Park, CA.
- Schedule: Standard weekday schedule.
- Compensation: 200k-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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