XRD Facility Manager

The role

An experienced diffraction specialist will manage an X-ray diffraction facility including multiple laboratory diffractometers. You will handle instrument maintenance, user training, radiation safety, and commissioning new instruments while working with scientists, technicians, and engineers.

What you will do

• Instrument alignment, calibration, configuration control, and uptime
• Maintain house standards and a regular QC schedule
• Perform difficult measurements including non-routine geometries and air-sensitive samples
• Troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, and coordination of service contracts
• Site preparation, acceptance testing, and commissioning new instruments
• Train and certify scientists and technicians
• Maintain SOPs, measurement recipes, and data-reduction conventions
• Ensure raw data and metadata are recorded consistently
• X-ray equipment registration, compliance, interlock testing, and surveys
• Compressed gas and cryogen handling

Required 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
• Comfortable troubleshooting hardware and judging when to repair versus call for service
• Careful documentation habits
• Able to support many users in a busy lab
• PhD in materials science, physics, chemistry, or a related field, or equivalent experience

Nice to have

• experience managing a shared user facility or commercial XRD lab
• automation
• other materials characterization techniques

Before you apply

• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. / Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates

About the company

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