Research Scientist — Fusion & Plasma Physics

Fusion has a hiring problem that is the opposite of most fields: there is more money than there are people. Commercial fusion companies in Europe and the US have raised at a scale that lets them build real machines, and the constraint on how fast they move is now the number of physicists who can do the work.

This page is for plasma physicists — PhDs, postdocs and research staff — whose publication record shows first-principles physics applied to magnetic confinement, and who would consider industry if the right problem appeared.

What the roles actually look like

The companies hiring are building hardware, not writing papers. A typical role sits between simulation and design: model something about the plasma well enough that a reactor design decision can be made on it, then feed that back into the magnetic configuration. Energetic particle confinement, MHD stability, scenario modelling, transport.

Two things distinguish these jobs from academic posts. The work is judged by whether it changes a design, so reduced-order models that are good enough to iterate on often matter more than the highest-fidelity simulation. And it is relentlessly interdisciplinary — plasma physics constraints are traded against magnets, cryogenics, manufacturing and controls in the same conversation.

Why a publication record works better here than keywords

Fusion makes the case for capability matching more starkly than any other field we index, because the keyword pool is nearly empty.

Consider a company building a stellarator that needs someone on fast-ion confinement and Alfvén eigenmodes. Search for candidates with stellarator experience and you will find a few dozen people worldwide, most of them at the two or three institutes that run the machines, most of them not moving. On keywords, the role is unfillable.

But the physics is not rare. Energetic particle transport and wave-particle interaction have been studied for decades on tokamaks — JET, ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D — by people who have never touched a stellarator and whose papers never use the word. The confinement geometry differs; the kinetic physics, the simulation methods and the analysis do not. Some of it transfers from astrophysical and space plasma work too, further from the application and just as relevant on method.

So the candidate pool for a stellarator role is not the stellarator community. It is everyone whose published work demonstrates the underlying physics, which is perhaps two orders of magnitude larger. Reading papers rather than titles is the only way to see that pool at all. In most fields, capability matching is an improvement on keyword search. Here it is the difference between having candidates and having none.

What registering does, and does not, do

You give us an ORCID iD or a Google Scholar profile. We read the publication record and build a capability profile from what the work demonstrates. When a client role fits it, we get in touch.

There is no application to write and no need to be looking. You may hear nothing for months, because this depends on a matching role opening rather than on anything you do. Nothing about you is published, and we contact no one on your behalf without asking you first.

What we look for

• Energetic particle transport and fast-ion confinement
• Kinetic and gyrokinetic simulation
• MHD stability and wave-particle interaction physics
• Orbit-following and hybrid MHD modelling
• Magnetic configuration and stellarator optimisation
• Reduced-order modelling for design studies
• Scientific computing in Fortran, C++, Julia or Python

Roles you might be matched to

• Burning Plasma Physicist at a commercial stellarator company
• Plasma Simulation Scientist on a magnetic-confinement design team
• Computational Physicist working on reactor-scale scenario modelling

How this works

Register once with your ORCID iD or Google Scholar profile. We read your publication record and build a capability profile from what your papers show you can actually do. When a client role fits that profile, we get in touch.

This is not a single vacancy. You are registering for Fusion & Plasma Physics roles as they open, and there may be no suitable role today. Nothing about you is published, and we do not contact anyone on your behalf without asking first.

Questions

All my work was on tokamaks. Is that a problem for stellarator roles?

No, and it is close to the norm. The stellarator community is small enough that most people qualified for these roles trained on tokamaks. What transfers is the physics — energetic particle transport, Alfvénic activity, kinetic instabilities — not the device. Matching on your publication record sees that; a search for 'stellarator' does not.

I work on astrophysical or space plasmas, not fusion. Does that count?

Sometimes, and it is worth registering to find out. Wave-particle interaction and kinetic instability work often transfers directly. The capability profile distinguishes the physics you have done from the application you did it in, so you are assessed on the former.

Do I need to be actively job hunting?

No. Most people who register are not applying anywhere. Registering means we contact you when a role fits, not that you are on the market.

What happens to my ORCID iD?

We use it to pull your publication record and build a capability profile. It is how we match on research depth rather than on job titles.

Will my current employer see this?

No. Registrations are private. Nothing about you is published, and we do not contact anyone without asking you first.