Senior Turbulence Modeller

Company Description

By 2050, the planet could be using twice as much electricity compared to today. Are you interested in contributing and helping to shape the future of the world’s energy? If so, read on.

Fusion, the process that powers the Sun and Stars, is one of the most promising options for generating the cleaner, carbon-free energy that our world badly needs.

UKAEA leads the way in realizing fusion energy, partnering with industry and research for groundbreaking advancements. Our goal is to bring fusion electricity to the grid, supported by tomorrow's power stations. In pursuit of our mission, UKAEA embraces core values: Innovative, Committed, Trusted, and Collaborative.

As an employee of UKAEA you will benefit from:

• Outstanding defined benefit pension scheme, details of which can be found at the end of this advert
• Corporate bonus scheme up to 7% and a Relocation allowance (if eligible)
• Flexible working options including family friendly policies and the right to request flexible working from the start of your employment. 
• Employee Assistance Programme and trained Mental Health First Aiders, 
• Generous annual leave allowance starting with 25 days, plus 3 days Christmas closure and 2.5 privilege days, in addition to UK bank holidays
• Wide range of career development opportunities
• A vibrant culture committed to equality and being fully inclusive

Job Description

As Senior Turbulence Modeller you will play a leading role in advancing our understanding of turbulent transport in the core and/or pedestal region of fusion devices through the development of first principles theory and exploitation of state-of-the-art gyrokinetic and transport codes. You will also lead and contribute to turbulence science in support of devices such as JET, MASTU, and STEP.

Other responsibilities:

• Lead the development of transport theory including identifying missing physics in current models
• Act as a scientific point of contact for turbulent transport modelling in transport barriers
• Act as a scientific contact for reduced (quasilinear)turbulent transport models, e.g. TGLF
• Perform interpretive and predictive linear and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of the core and/or pedestal region of devices such as JET, MASTU, and STEP
• Delivery of lead-author and co-author publications in the field of turbulence and transport
• Disseminate results through presentations at international conferences.
• Plan and conduct research independently
• Effective team-working with others working in related areas, both internally at UKAEA, and externally in national and international collaborations.
• Contribute to the research programmes of MAST-U and STEP
• Contribute to the design programme for STEP
• Collaborate with external stakeholders as a recognised technical expert where appropriate

Qualifications

Essential Qualifications:

• PhD or equivalent experience in relevant field.
• Proven ability to conduct independent research.
• Substantial research experience in plasma turbulence (at least at PDRA level).
• Expert knowledge of plasma transport, turbulence and gyrokinetics.
• Track record of publications in the field.
• Expertise in key numerical and computational algorithms used in gyrokinetic codes.
• Demonstrable significant exploitation and/or development of gyrokinetic codes or reduced transport models.
• Experience in programming and developing software for HPC.(e.g. F90, MPI, OpenMP, Python etc).
• Enthusiasm for leading or taking substantial roles in collaborative projects.

Additional Information

A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/

UKAEA's mission is clean energy for all, and we welcome talented people from all backgrounds who want to help us achieve our mission.  We are under-represented from some groups and so want to encourage applications in particular from women in STEM, people from Black British Caribbean and African backgrounds and from Pakistani and Bangladeshi British backgrounds. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) and Wellbeing and our EDI Networks actively promote Inclusion and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.

UK Atomic Energy Authority is committed to being accessible. Please email talent@ukaea.uk if you have any questions or require help or adjustments to compete on a fair basis, for example, changes to the way we interview or share information.  

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.