Research Associate in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

About the Role

The School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia is seeking qualified candidates for 3 Postdoc positions. This role is within a newly established multidisciplinary research center focused on supercomputer simulations of extreme conditions experienced by hypersonic vehicles and quantifying overall uncertainty. The selected candidate will assume the role of a software developer in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Propulsion Laboratory.

Key Responsibilities

• Development and maintenance of predictive software components.
• Support integration into the full system.
• Assist with full-system testing and analysis.
• Work with a multidisciplinary and multi-university team involving engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians constructing a full-system package comprising predictive software, data analytics, and machine learning.
• Work closely with the Software Architect in developing and implementing plans for integrating software libraries performing I/O, adaptive mesh-refinement, data assimilation, and AI/ML.
• May be expected to supervise other postdocs and mentor PhD students in aspects of software development and usage.
• Effective communication and coordination with computing-facility technical staff on resource planning, code deployment, and production workflows.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Advanced C++.
• Parallel programming models such as MPI and OpenMP.
• Hands-on experience with GPU programming using CUDA, HIP, or performance-portability frameworks such as Kokkos or RAJA.
• Strong command of numerical methods for partial differential equations, including high-order spatial discretizations, shock-capturing schemes, implicit and explicit time integration, and scalable linear and nonlinear solvers.
• Demonstrated experience with performance profiling, optimization, and scalability analysis on leadership-class computing systems.
• Proven ability to develop complex simulation software within multidisciplinary teams, applying modern software engineering practices: version control, continuous integration, automated testing, and code verification and validation.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computational & Applied Mathematics, or a closely related discipline with research experience in computational science and engineering by the start date.
• Deep expertise in developing high-performance scientific software for massively parallel, heterogeneous supercomputing architectures.
• Record of contributing to large-scale simulation codes for cutting-edge engineering applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise in physics-based modeling and simulation of compressible and turbulent flows.
• Relevant areas include direct numerical simulation (DNS), large-eddy simulation (LES), Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) approaches, and hybrid URANS/LES approaches.
• Experience with hypersonic flows is highly desirable, particularly hypersonic boundary layers, laminar-to-turbulent transition, shock–boundary-layer interactions, and thermochemical nonequilibrium and finite-rate chemistry.
• Experience with multi-fidelity modeling strategies, including reduced-order models, data-driven or machine-learning-augmented closures, surrogate modeling, and uncertainty quantification.
• Familiarity with multiphase flows, reacting flows, adaptive mesh refinement, or mapped multiblock techniques is a plus.
• Candidates with focused expertise or interests in:
• Developing moving mapped multiblock techniques for complex geometries.
• Integrating embedded boundary and mapped multiblock techniques with adaptive mesh refinement for high-order CFD algorithms.
• Implementing wall-modeled LES and wall-resolved LES for high speed flows over complex geometries.
• Developing space-time parallel algorithms.
• Developing quantum algorithms for Boltzmann equations.