What if you could work with remarkable people on extraordinary things? What if the end result was something a little bit special? What if your role was mission critical?
For nearly 70 years, AWE has been at the forefront of nuclear weapons research and development. We have a critical mission: to provide the warheads for the UK’s ultimate deterrent – Trident. We also use our unique skills to provide wider UK government with counter-terrorism and nuclear threat reduction solutions.
It takes a special sort of person to work at AWE. What if that person was you?
AWE has a unique opportunity for a Theoretical Physicist to join our Design Physics Group. This exciting role will allow the successful candidate to split their time between being a Design Physicist and supporting the Computational Physics Group within AWE.
This exciting role within Design Physics is split between two areas:
At least half of your time will be spent as a Design Physicist. Your task will be to underpin theoretical and modelling capabilities to enhance the understanding of the complex physical processes associated with nuclear weapon function, whilst applying them to the current and future product designs. You will use state of the art multi-physics codes to model hydrodynamics, radiation transport and nuclear processes using a range of experimental data to benchmark the predictions.
The other part of the role supports a team within the Computational Physics Group improving and implementing particle transport methods in the bespoke multi-physics codes used at AWE, and which you will use as a Design Physicist. This will involve developing the code in C++, developing the theoretical underpinnings of the code, troubleshooting and supporting users of the code, in addition to carrying out verification and benchmarking of the routines.
Design physicists develop and apply complex physics models of nuclear warheads, in order to underwrite the physics performance and safety of existing and future designs.
The Design Physics Group also develop theoretical and experimental techniques for Emergency Response capabilities, enable key supporting hydrodynamic and radiation physics experiments and understand the performance and prompt outputs of any potential nuclear weapon that could be fielded by another state or non-state actor.
The Computational Physics Group (CPG) provides the bespoke software and unpinning expertise used to model nuclear weapons and experimental physics at AWE. For decades, physics codes have been a powerful tool in supporting our main programme. Continuing to deliver AWE’s capability requires CPG to maintain quality and understanding of a significant range of algorithms that have a unique pedigree.
CPG work to continue developing the accuracy and fidelity of AWE’s ability to underwrite and deliver the stockpile. This involves adapting our algorithms and code infrastructure against the fast-evolving world of High Performance Computing (HPC) and to look to new areas where our skillset and expertise can help other areas of the organisation
Whilst not a check list, we are interested in hearing from candidates who can demonstrate some of the following:
As part of our People Promise, AWE (one of the best 25 big companies to work for in the UK) has a range of benefits to suit you. These include:
1e127ede32d8f816eacfb0aed73cee11