AI Research Scientist — Agentic AI for Materials Discovery

Redmond or Pasadena on site Until 8/22/2026 2+ years exp First posted May 26, 2026 Last posted May 26, 2026
Job description
This role sits within Meta's Reality Labs Research, in the Material and Systems Innovation team, which develops advanced materials for two of Meta's most ambitious hardware frontiers: lightweight, all-day wearable AR glasses and next-generation sensing and actuating materials for robotics. The AI Specialist will design and build LLM-orchestrated multi-agent systems that autonomously drive materials discovery pipelines — from computational screening and simulation through synthesis and characterization — across both domains. By closing this loop with agentic AI, we aim to compress discovery timelines from years to weeks, directly accelerating Meta's ability to ship breakthrough AR/VR and robotics hardware. This position bridges two of Meta's highest-priority investment areas — frontier AI and the physical systems underpinning the metaverse and embodied intelligence — and will contribute both production systems and published research at top-tier venues.

Responsibilities

  • Design, implement, and optimize LLM-orchestrated multi-agent systems for autonomous materials discovery pipelines
  • Build specialized AI sub-agents that operate within a closed-loop discovery framework
  • Integrate agentic AI workflows with computational chemistry tools (DFT, MD, Monte Carlo) and HPC infrastructure
  • Develop and fine-tune retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems over scientific literature corpora for real-time knowledge synthesis
  • Collaborate with materials scientists, computational chemists, and ML researchers to translate domain workflows into autonomous agent architectures
  • Evaluate and benchmark agent performance on materials discovery tasks — measuring accuracy, throughput, and synthetic viability of generated candidates
  • Contribute to open-source tooling and publish research at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or domain journals)

Minimum Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience
  • PhD in AI, Computer Science, Computational Chemistry, Materials Science, or related field
  • 2+ years of experience with large language models, prompt engineering, or agentic AI frameworks (e.g., React, tool-use agents, multi-agent orchestration)
  • Demonstrated programming skills in Python and experience with ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or similar)
  • Demonstrated experience in building end-to-end AI systems that integrate external tools and APIs
  • Familiarity with at least one domain: computational chemistry, molecular simulation, or materials informatics

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience building multi-agent or LLM-orchestrated systems for scientific applications
  • Familiarity with atomistic simulation tools (VASP, Gaussian, LAMMPS, ASE) or cheminformatics libraries
  • Publications at peer-reviewed ML or domain conferences
  • Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, or scientific literature mining
  • Understanding of crystal structure prediction, molecular dynamics, or quantum chemistry workflows
  • Experience with HPC job orchestration

Compensation

  • $184,000/year - $257,000/year; Country: US; Bonus eligible; Equity eligible

About Meta

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.

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Equal Opportunity

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Accommodations

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About this role

Summary

Design and build AI systems for autonomous materials discovery using large language models and multi-agent frameworks.

Job title

AI Research Scientist — Agentic AI for Materials Discovery

Experience level

PhD plus 2+ years

Minimum experience

2+ years exp

Industry

technology

Location requirements

Redmond or Pasadena; remote work possible

Salary

$184,000/year - $257,000/year; Country: US; Bonus eligible; Equity eligible

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

PythonML frameworkslarge language modelsprompt engineeringmulti-agent systems

Preferred skills

multi-agent systemsatomistic simulation toolspublicationsretrieval-augmented generationHPC orchestration

Specializations

large language modelsagentic AIcomputational chemistrymaterials sciencescientific literature
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

Redmond, WA, USA

On-site City

Pasadena, CA, USA

On-site City