What does a Materials Scientist do?
Materials scientists study and analyze chemical properties of structures in different man-made and natural materials including glass, ceramic, or metals. They study and investigate them to gain new knowledge about how to strengthen existing materials. They also combine particular materials to create brand-new materials with specific properties and characteristics for different applications or products; They experiment with various materials and chemicals to determine how new materials can best serve or improve humanity.
Materials scientists create items for everyday use and study and understand old materials to create newer ones with improved characteristics. They devise methods to test certain materials and determine effects that different conditions have on them and plan lab experiments to assess logical possibilities of techniques and procedures used to create new materials with other characteristics. Sometimes they fill out grant proposals for development or funding for research and development and ensure all laboratory personnel follows government and safety standards. Materials scientists have a doctorate degree in materials science, engineering, chemistry, or chemical engineering.
- Ensure integrity of data through accurate transactions, documentation, and tracking of all activities in the development group.
- Translate business and engineering requirements into deliverables and software products.
- Work closely with quantum computing research teams, as well as industry and academic partners.
- Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of historical business data to help automate and optimize key processes.
- Ongoing communication with clients, internal support groups, resources, vendors and staff.
- Stay familiar with the field and apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to our domain problems, around forecasting, bidding, allocation, and optimization.
- Present results, reports, and data insights to both technical and business leadership.
- Organize multiple project responsibilities to ensure tasks are appropriately prioritized and executed on time.
- Assume responsibility for successfully accomplishing work objectives and delivering business results. setting high standards of performance for self and others.
- Capacity to handle and manipulate objects using hands and arms.
- Work on large engineering efforts that solve significantly complex problems facing global customers.
- Play a critical role in ideation for the team and run live experiments, with opportunities to publish your work.
- Ensure that all work is accurate, precise, properly documented, within requirements.
- Design and execute experiments in support of potential new technological offerings as well as participate or support research articles and publications.
- Interpret data and make sound recommendations based on data.
- Invent ways to overcome technical limitations and enable new forms of analysis to drive key technical and business decisions.
- Produce peer-reviewed scientific paper in top journals and conferences.
- Bachelor's or Graduate's Degree in computer science, mathematics, information systems or engineering or equivalent experience.
- Experience with R Language, C, C#, JAVA, and Python processes and systems.
- Experience with lateral flow, experimental design, parsing, and predictive modeling.
- Skilled in computing, deep learning, and datasets.
- A leader and collaborator with an eye for continuous improvement and attention to detail.
- Comfortable presenting findings in reports and meetings.
How much does a Materials Scientist make?
Base Pay
Additional Pay
$82,092
/ yrMaterials Scientist Career Path
Learn how to become a Materials Scientist, what skills and education you need to succeed, and what level of pay to expect at each step on your career path.
Years of Experience Distribution
Materials Scientist Insights
Zalando“The compensation is quite "competitive" if you get a new signing but yearly adjustment is terrible.”
Amazon“Opportunities to build a career at one of the biggest tech companies in the world.”
LanceSoft“When I inquired about this to my direct manager at Beckman Coulter she said no such thing was possible and she’s never done that before.”
Pfizer“In my current position I did not feel there was enough professional and career development to help me progress in my specific department.”
Amazon“I took some personal development and finance courses (it is not relevant to my role in any way).”
Amazon“I'm allowed 100% remote work and I'm am free to set my working hours.”
Amazon“Great career growth is good”
Amazon“Good team and manger Rapid growing Perfect as my first job”
Frequently asked questions about the roles and responsibilities of a Materials Scientist
- Quality Control Chemist
- Research And Development Chemist
- Research Scientist
- Chemist