The latest roles span defense contractors, new space, autonomous maritime systems, humanoid robotics, eVTOL aircraft, engineering software and academic research.

See All Open Roles

Presenting at CD/DC Washington, and Hiring

Several companies on the CD/DC Washington speaker roster are still actively hiring. If you want to understand what they are building and who they are looking for, come hear them present.

Vinci4D — 14 roles across GPU solver architecture, CFD, geometry/meshing, thermal-mechanical simulation, and foundation model infrastructure.

PhysicsX — Head of People Partnership as they scale their AI simulation platform.

Arena Physica — Research Scientist, Machine Learning and Member of Technical Staff – Agentic Reasoning & Core Capabilities. Building electromagnetic superintelligence for hardware verification.

Neural Concept — ML for CAX Application Engineer, Application Engineer, and Tech Lead, Vertical Solutions.

nTop — Field Solutions Engineer and Senior Manager, Aerospace & Defense Business Development.

Celedon — Agentic Systems Engineer, Full-Stack Software Engineer, and two summer internships.

InfinitForm — Software Engineer, FEA & Structural Optimization and Product & Content Marketing Manager.

Boston Dynamics — Seven Atlas roles across reinforcement learning, perception, agentic systems, structures, and manufacturing.

Thornton Tomasetti — Computational Mechanics (FEA) Engineer, Washington DC. Advanced FEA for defense, infrastructure, and energy clients.

Browse all at cdfam.com/careers →

See the Full Program

Defense and Aerospace

Shield AI have five roles posted, a clear signal of scale-up across V-BAT and Hivemind programs. Principal Aerostructures Design Engineer, Engineering Manager Structural Design, Power Electronics Thermal Engineer, Principal Engineer AI Infrastructure, and Senior Engineer Mission Systems – Avionics & Sensor Integration.

Lockheed Martin now has three computational designer roles live simultaneously including two Houdini-based procedural modeling positions and a fully remote agentic systems engineering role. Plus the Advanced Factory & Design Lead at Sikorsky, additive manufacturing development, and thermal simulation engineering.

Draper — Sr. Electromagnetic Design Engineer, Cambridge MA. Precision inertial instruments for guidance applications ranging from ballistic missiles to miniature guided munitions.

Anduril, Northrop Grumman, and other defense roles from May remain open. View all →

New Space

SpaceX — Harnessing Design Engineer, Starlink. Electro-mechanical wire harness design in NX for the world’s largest satellite constellation.

Stoke Space — Senior Structures Design Engineer for 100% reusable rockets.

Lanteris Space Systems — Sr. Structures Design Engineer. Spacecraft structures for a company with 60 years of mission systems heritage.

Robotics, Autonomy, and Physical AI

McKinsey — Specialist, Robotics and Physical AI. Multi-physics simulation, digital twins, and physics-informed ML applied to industrial client challenges. An unusual entry for a consulting firm.

ABB Robotics — AI Adoption Lead for R&D, global role. Leading AI integration into engineering workflows across all global R&D sites as SoftBank consumes ABB Robotics.

Saronic Technologies — Industrial Designer, Austin TX. Applying premium product design standards to next-generation autonomous maritime systems — Rhino, KeyShot, CMF.

Also still open: Apptronik, Agility Robotics, Physical Intelligence, and General Motors robotics roles.

Advanced Manufacturing

Fabri — Software Engineer, Generalist. Building the software stack for a digital foundry combining additive manufacturing and precision metal casting. Early-stage, well-capitalized, onsite Boston.

VulcanForms — Additive Manufacturing Technician and Additive Manufacturing Specialist, Devens MA. Hands-on LPBF operation supporting applications development and production.

Industrial and Product Design

Meta — Industrial Designer, XR Hardware, Redmond WA. Category-defining consumer electronics and wearables. 10+ years experience expected.

Joby Aviation — Senior Industrial Designer. Cabin interiors, CMF, and Class-A surfacing for an eVTOL aircraft approaching FAA certification.

Research and Academic

Politecnico di Milano — PhD Scholarship, Physics-Informed Generative AI for Architected Materials. Generative deep learning and multi-physics inverse design of metamaterials. Joint with AI4I.

TU Delft — PhD Position, Textile-Form Weaving Design Methods. Digital design-fabrication workflows for zero-waste woven garments. Part of the INTERWeuVEN Horizon Europe project. Deadline June 29.

The people hiring for these roles are the same people who show up at CDFAM.

If you want to understand what they are actually building and who they are looking for, CDFAM Washington is where that conversation happens , not through a job description filtered by HR, but directly with the engineers and leaders doing the work.

Register for CD/DC Washington →

Browse all open roles →

Registration for Government Observers

A reminder that early bird registration for CD/DC closes Sunday, June 1.

Group rates are available for registrations of 4 or more from the same organization.

The two-day program takes place in the Union Market district of Washington, DC, with an evening demonstration session on July 15 open to government employees at no cost.

What the program looks like

The program is shaped around how computational design, simulation, and AI are actually being deployed across aerospace, defense, robotics, architecture, and software.

Ryan McClelland of NASA delivers the keynote. Two years on from his “Text to Spaceship” talk at CDFAM NYC, the update covers how AI-driven workflows from systems requirements to mission-ready hardware have moved from speculative to demonstrable.

Brandon DeMille from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems on topology optimization in aerostructure conceptual design, specifically the compression of time between initial concept and informed engineering decision.

Pratap Ranade from Arena Physica with Atlas RF Studio now in public beta, putting AI-driven electromagnetic design into the hands of practitioners rather than researchers.

Brian Ringley from Boston Dynamics on the shift from programming humanoid robots to teaching them, and what that requires of the underlying AI architecture.

Marta D’Elia from Atomic Machines on the Matter Design Engine, a workflow that turns informal descriptions into manufacturable MEMS 2.0 devices while keeping AI in a constrained, physics-grounded role.

Giorgia Cannici from Virginia Tech on magnetotropic plants engineered so their growth direction can be steered in real time through externally applied magnetic fields. Not an immediate application area, but a worthwhile lens on where continuous differential material systems are heading.

Speakers from Thornton Tomasetti, Neural Concept, SysGit, Luminary, Istari Digital, Pasteur Labs, MIT, CannonDesign, Lexset, SimScale, Intact Solutions, Cognitive Design Systems, Stantec, and Not a Robot Engineering complete the program. A few sessions are still being finalized.

Full program

Evening demonstration, July 15

A live integration of six tools from Istari Digital, Arena Physica, Luminary, nTop, C-Infinity, and SysGit, showing an end-to-end workflow that updates a UAS design and re-certifies it for manufacturability and safety in less time than it takes to assemble an Ikea bookshelf.

Government employees attend the evening session at no cost.

Register

Hiring activity in the field

The CDFAM job board added more than 100 roles this month. Many come from companies presenting at CD/DC, and as many again from companies attending. Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman alone account for over 20 open positions spanning hypersonic thermal engineering, sensor fusion, additive manufacturing, agentic AI, and digital thread integration. Simulation engineers, computational designers, AI/ML researchers, and advanced manufacturing specialists remain in active demand across defense, aerospace, robotics, architecture, and industrial software. AI is creating these roles, not displacing them.

Register to Attend

Happy Saturday, the CDFAM job board has added over 100 roles this month!

Many of them are coming from companies presenting at CD/DC in Washington this July, (check out the overview of the program, it is going to be pretty amazing, robots, rockets, magnetic plants, architectural beams and etc…) and from companies in the audience who are hiring just as actively with dream jobs.

The demand is definitely increasing, AI is helping to create, not taking these jobs away.

Simulation engineers, computational designers, AI/ML researchers, and advanced manufacturing specialists are all in high demand across defense, aerospace, robotics, architecture, and industrial software.

On the defense side, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman collectively account for over 20 roles spanning hypersonic thermal engineering, sensor fusion, additive manufacturing, agentic AI systems, and digital thread.

These are not backfill positions replacing retiring engineers.

They reflect significant investment in the future tools and methods that will define how the next generation of design, engineering and architectural systems are built.

Presenting at CDFAM in Washington, and Hiring

Vinci4D — 14 roles across GPU solver architecture, CFD, geometry/meshing, thermal-mechanical simulation, foundation model infrastructure, and full-stack software.

Celedon — Multiple positions from full time agentic systems engineers to interns

Neural Concept — Three roles: ML for CAX Application Engineer, Application Engineer, and Tech Lead, Vertical Solutions

nTop — Field Solutions Engineer (Remote) and Senior Manager, Aerospace & Defense Business Development.

InfinitForm — Software Engineer, FEA & Structural Optimization and Product & Content Marketing Manager.

Boston Dynamics — Seven Atlas roles posted this month across reinforcement learning, perception, agentic systems, structures, and manufacturing.

Arena Physics - Multiple roles building electromagnetic superintelligence.

Thornton Tomasetti — Engineer Co-op, Immersive Experiences. Developing real-time security and digital twin experiences in Unreal Engine from Revit models, within CORE studio.

Browse all at cdfam.com/careers →

Defense and Aerospace

Anduril Industries is hiring across simulation, structural analysis, thermal engineering for hypersonic vehicles, and digital manufacturing. The breadth reflects a company in serious production scale-up mode across air, space, and maritime domains.

Lockheed Martin — Multiple roles including the Advanced Factory & Design Lead at Sikorsky (shaping next-generation automated rotorcraft manufacturing, additive manufacturing development, AI/ML research engineering, and a fully remote agentic systems engineering role.

Northrop Grumman — Mechanical MBE CAD/PLM Tools Engineer focused on digital thread maturation between engineering and manufacturing, plus two additive manufacturing engineering roles in Baltimore.

Relativity Space is hiring at the director and senior director level across tooling and avionics hardware. Isar Aerospace posted a structural manufacturing technician role.

AI Tools for Engineering

The most concentrated cluster of open roles this month. Several major technology companies are hiring specifically at the intersection of AI and engineering simulation.

OpenAI — Advanced Packaging Multi-Physics Modeling Engineer. Thermal, mechanical, and electrical co-simulation for next-generation AI chip packaging.

Apple — FEA/AI Methods Engineer. Developing AI/ML methods to accelerate structural simulation across iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.

Synopsys (Ansys) — R&D Staff Engineer, AI/ML Discrete Geometry Processing. Mesh generation, surface reconstruction, GPU-accelerated simulation.

AI Fund — Engineer in Residence: CAD AI. 12-week residency building a text-and-image-to-parametric-CAD system, with co-founder potential if the concept validates.

Also: NVIDIA, Stability AI, Autodesk, Cadence, MathWorks, and AVEVA.

Probably Project Prometheus, if you know anyone there?

Robotics

Simulation and mechanical engineering roles across the humanoid robotics space this month.

Boston Dynamics posted seven Atlas roles — reinforcement learning, perception, agentic systems, structures, and manufacturing. See the CD/DC section above.

Apptronik — Three simulation-focused mechanical engineering roles in Austin: Hardware Simulation Manager, Mechanical Engineer – Thermal Simulation & Analysis, and Senior Mechanical Engineer – Structural Simulation & Analysis.

Agility Robotics — Senior AI Research Engineer and Mechanical Engineer – Actuators, across Fremont CA, Salem OR, and Pittsburgh PA.

Physical Intelligence — Mechanical Design Engineer, San Francisco.

General Motors — Automotive Robotics Researcher, Warren MI. Ph.D.-level role in kinematics, motion planning, sim-to-real, and multi-robot systems.

Additive Manufacturing

VulcanForms — Director, Additive Machine Build, Devens MA. Leading build, commissioning, and qualification of next-generation laser metal AM capacity at scale.

Nordex — Engineer Blade Structures, Hamburg. FEA and structural analysis of fibre-reinforced composite wind turbine blades.

Computational Design and Architecture

SOM, Ennead, Populous, and Boskalis all posted computational designer roles this month ranging from early career in NYC and Kansas, to a senior role embedding computational workflows into large-scale civil infrastructure in the Netherlands.

Automotive and Industrial Design

Ford posted four roles across digital modelling, Class A surfacing, and powertrain structures. BMW’s Design Studio has a six-month computational design internship starting September in Munich. Airbus posted an industrial designer role in Toulouse.

Lutron is looking for a Distinguished Engineer to teach mechanical design craft to junior engineers with 25+ years of experience expected, so expertise is not being replaced by AI.

Attend CD/DC to Connect with the CDFAM Community

The people hiring for these roles are the same people who show up looking for talent at CDFAM.

If you want to understand what they are really looking for from the person you will actually work with, CD/DC Washington is where you can get the real role requirements they can’t always articulate in a job description that has been diluted and homogenised by HR and then screened by dumb AI.

If you are looking to hire, the best of the best attend CDFAM conferences, whether you are looking to find a brilliant, motivated PhD student from the volunteers helping out at the event, or poach a seasoned (but not yet jaded) veteran from the stage, CDFAM has the highest density of intellectual curiosity and expertise in the world of advanced engineering.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Register to Attend

The CD/DC program brings together engineering practitioners, software developers, and researchers to present current work in computational design, simulation-driven engineering, AI-assisted workflows, and data-centric approaches to engineering problems across aerospace, defense, infrastructure, manufacturing, and energy.

Confirmed speakers represent organizations including NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Boston Dynamics, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Atomic Machines, Neural Concept, Coreform, InfinitForm, Pasteur Labs, SimScale, Lexset, Virginia Tech, and Thornton Tomasetti, among others.

The format follows the established CDFAM structure: practitioners presenting real work to a technically qualified peer audience.

Full CD/DC Program

An evening session for government observers

On July 15, beginning at 5:00 PM, there is a dedicated evening session open to registered government observers at no cost.

The session is built around a live demonstration.

Six AI-native engineering tools: Istari Digital, Arena Physica, Luminary, nTop, C-Infinity, and SysGit will operate together as an interoperable stack.

The demonstration will show how these tools can integrate new sensor and compute data, update a complete UAS design, and re-certify it for manufacturability and safety in a single connected workflow, in real time.

Each participating organization addresses a different layer of the engineering stack: digital thread management, electromagnetic design, multi-domain physics optimization, implicit-function-based geometry, assembly configuration, and systems engineering integration.

The demonstration is not about any one tool. It is about what becomes possible when they work together.

The evening format includes networking and direct access to the engineers and developers running the demonstration.

The evening event complies with Widely Attended Gathering guidelines as specified by the legislative and executive branches of the United States Government.

Who should attend

The full two-day program is for engineers, researchers, and software developers working in or adjacent to the problem domains on the agenda.

Previous CDFAM attendees have come from organizations including Airbus, BMW, Sandia National Laboratories, Nike, NASA, New Balance, Samsung, BIG, HP, Apple, Lockheed Martin, GM, Princeton, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, NVIDIA, Siemens, GE, IDEO, Carbon, Foster + Partners, ARUP, Stryker, Tiffany, Relativity Space, Blue Origin, DARPA, INQTEL, USAF, US Navy, ORNL, and many more.

The evening session is specifically intended for government observers: program managers, contracting officers, policy staff, and technical advisors who need a firsthand look at where AI-native engineering workflows currently stand and what integration between tools looks like at program scale.

Registration for government observers is now open: https://cdfam.com/cd-dc-registration/

Details

• Full program: July 15-16, 2026

• Evening session (government observers, no cost): July 15, 5:00 PM

• Location: Station DC, 1323 4th St NE, Washington, DC 20002

• Registration and program details: cdfam.com/cd-dc-26

Register to Attend

Greg Grigoriadis of Metisec describes a design toolkit that replaces fixed inputs with statistical distributions and runs Monte Carlo simulations across the resulting parameter space. The output is a probabilistic picture of performance: failure probabilities, sensitivity rankings, and the specific conditions that actually drive risk.

A sensor mounting bracket for a smart wearable serves as the test case. Traditional optimization cut bracket weight by 30%. Probabilistic analysis revealed the design had been tuned to an improbable drop event and still carried unresolved thermal failure risk. Incorporating that information allowed the team to re-optimize and achieve a 50% weight reduction at a demonstrably low failure probability.

Greg is an engineering consultant specializing in consumer electronics, digital twin technologies, and advanced simulation workflows. His practice combines physics-based modeling with data-driven methods across finite element analysis, predictive maintenance, and automated computation pipelines.

Presented at CDFAM Barcelona 2026. Learn more at cdfam.com.

A roundup of roles posted to the CDFAM job board since April 1st, spanning simulation infrastructure, AI-driven geometry, additive manufacturing, robotics, and computational design in architecture and industry.

Presenting at CD/DC Washington, and Hiring

Several companies on the CD/DC Washington speaker roster are actively building their teams.

Come hear them present July 15-16, 2026. If you want to work on what they’re building, the roles are on the board now.

• Arena Physica — simulation, electrical engineering, and systems deployment

• Atomic Machines — engineering, robotics software, and manufacturing (10 open roles)

• Boston Dynamics — Atlas mechanical, manufacturing, RL research, perception, and agentic systems

• CDS — Computational Design Engineer

• InfinitForm — Product & Content Marketing Manager

• Luminary — Software Engineer, Product

• nTop - Senior Manager, Aerospace & Defense Business Development

• Pasteur Labs — Platforms Engineer + PhD/SWE internships

• PhysicsX — Head of People Partnership

• Vinci4D — GPU solvers, CFD, meshing, foundation model architecture, thermal simulation (14 roles!!!)

Browse all roles at cdfam.com/careers →

Also on the Board

X (Alphabet) — Rapid Evaluator, Future of Compute — Mountain View, CA Moonshot ideation across post-silicon compute, HPC, and additive nanomanufacturing. $221k–$328k. View role →

Stability AI — Research Scientist, Controlled 3D Generation — Remote Diffusion and flow-matching for controllable 3D content. Meshes, Gaussians, NeRFs, differentiable rendering. View role →

Synopsys (Ansys) — R&D Staff Engineer, AI/ML Discrete Geometry Processing — Canonsburg, PA AI/ML applied to mesh generation, surface reconstruction, and GPU-accelerated simulation. $120k–$180k. View role →

AVEVA — Fellow, Emerging Technology Trends — San Francisco / Philadelphia / Boston Senior foresight role forecasting industrial technology shifts over a 3–7 year horizon. $293k–$489k. View role →

NVIDIA — AI for Design Engineer — Santa Clara, CA. $136k–$264k. View role →

Lockheed Martin — Multiple roles across additive manufacturing, AI/ML, thermal simulation, sensor fusion, and F-35 simulation labs.

Amazon — Multiple roles across robotics simulation, thermal design, and Annapurna Labs hardware.

Relativity Space — Tooling, avionics, additive manufacturing, and a Moonshot Engineer position.

General Motors — Computational Mechanics and CAD Researcher View role →

Joby Aviation — Additive Design Engineer — Marina, CA View role →

LEGO Group — Lead Engineer, Additive Manufacturing View role →

OXMAN — Computational Ecologist + Machine Learning Research Engineer

SOM — Junior Computational Designer, Architecture — New York, NY View role →

Populous — Computational Designer (Early Career) View role →

Nike (Jordan Brand) — Expert 3D Footwear Designer, Jordan 3D Studio View role →

Booz Allen Hamilton — Modeling and Simulation Software Engineer View role →

Browse all open roles at cdfam.com/careers →

Job boards are one thing. But if you are serious about where your career is heading in computational design, simulation, and AI engineering, there is no substitute for being in the right place at the right time .

The CDFAM audience is not a general tech crowd.

It is researchers, engineers, founders, and technical leads who are actively working at the edges of what computational tools can do, across aerospace, automotive, architecture, robotics, manufacturing, and beyond. Many of them are hiring. Many of them are looking for collaborators, not just employees. And almost none of those conversations ever even make it to a published job listing.

The people on stage represent some of the most consequential work happening in this field right now.

But the conversations that tend to matter most happen between sessions, over lunch, and at the end of the day, with the person sitting next to you who turns out to be building exactly the thing you have been thinking about.

If you are looking for your next role, your next collaborator, or simply a clearer sense of where the field is going and who is driving it.

CDFAM is where those connections get made.

See The Full CD/DC Program

Tilman Steininger, Customer Success Manager for Agentic Engineering at Synera, and Juan De Dios Escribano Felguera, Team Lead for Body-in-White and Corrosion Development at SEAT/CUPRA, present their collaborative work digitizing structural development workflows across the full BIW development cycle. Recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026.

About CDFAM

The CDFAM Computational Design Symposium is a global conference series bringing together researchers, engineers, and software developers working at the intersection of computational design, AI and machine learning for engineering and architecture. The program spans computational geometry, generative design, topology optimization, simulation-driven workflows, and advanced manufacturing across scales from architected materials to architectural systems. CDFAM events are held worldwide.

cdfam.com

The first recordings from the event are now available on the CDFAM YouTube channel.

The opening session from NVIDIA’s Pablo Hermoso Moreno covers AI surrogate models, accelerated physics solvers, and agentic CAE workflows, drawing on his background in Formula 1 aerodynamics and large-scale cloud AI deployment.

Mike Frei of ARENA Physica follows with the case for a foundation model for electromagnetism, addressing how geometry governs electromagnetic behavior and where current simulation workflows fall short for semiconductor, aerospace, and automotive applications.

Hao (Richard) Zhang from Augmenta and Simon Fraser University presents work on functional AI for 3D design automation in the built environment, including the first buildings in the world with electrical systems delivered by AI-powered generative design.

Raul Llamas-Sandin from Airbus and Universidad Europea de Madrid presents a GPU-accelerated topology optimization solver capable of handling structural synthesis problems with millions of elements in minutes on a workstation, with applications in bridge design, high-rise structural cores, and architectural form-finding.

Closing out the first batch, Johannes Mueller-Roemer from Fraunhofer IGD introduces SubSimX, a subdivision-native design and simulation pipeline that eliminates the mesh rebuild cycle, enabling continuous simulation-driven iteration directly on the control mesh.

More sessions will be released in the coming weeks that will join recordings from previous events in NYC, Berlin and Amsterdam.

The CDFAM series continues later this year.

CD/DC takes place July 15-16 in Washington DC, with a program focused on computational design and engineering AI across defense, aerospace, and government applications.

CDFAM Tokyo follows October 15-16 at the Tokyo International Forum, marking the first CDFAM event in the Asia-Pacific region.

Registration to attend and speaker presentation submissions for both events are available at cdfam.com.

In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Johannes Mueller-Roemer presents SubSimX, a pipeline that addresses this by treating subdivision surfaces as a native simulation medium rather than a preprocessing step. Designers work on a standard Catmull-Clark control mesh. Meshing and boundary condition setup happen once. From that point, geometry edits propagate to the existing analysis mesh in seconds, structural feedback is continuous, and the design session never has to stop for remeshing.

The technical core is a precomputed mapping between the control mesh and the volumetric interior, combined with a local mesh-repair step that maintains element quality through large deformations without changing mesh topology. Coupled with RISTRA, Fraunhofer’s GPU-accelerated FEM solver, the system delivers real-time or near real-time structural feedback. Johannes demonstrates how this enables dense design sweeps, topology optimization followed by subdivision refinement, and AI-in-the-loop exploration within practical industrial workflows.

Johannes Mueller-Roemer is Deputy Head of Interactive Engineering Technologies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD. He received his PhD from TU Darmstadt in 2019, where his dissertation introduced GPU data structures for tightly coupled modeling and simulation — the foundation SubSimX is built on.

Recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026 — https://cdfam.com/barcelona-2026/

In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Raul C. Llamas-Sandin presents a GPU-accelerated solver that addresses this directly, reducing solve times for large-scale problems to minutes on a workstation. He covers the key technical features that make it relevant for the built environment: asymmetric tension-compression stress constraints, thermoelastic analysis, and geometric constraint enforcement for fixed architectural elements and fenestration.

Applications demonstrated include bridge design and high-rise structural cores at spans up to 80 meters, as well as free-form architectural geometries exported as watertight STL files ready for digital fabrication. The solver’s modular configuration approach decouples problem definition from the numerical backend, making it adaptable across project types without reengineering the workflow.

Raul is a Future Projects Engineer at Airbus Operations SL and Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Universidad Europea de Madrid, with over two decades of experience in advanced aircraft design. He holds an MSc in Aerospace Vehicle Design from Cranfield University and 14 patents spanning aerodynamic devices and plasma actuation.

Recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026 — https://cdfam.com/barcelona-2026/

In this episode recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026, Richard introduces Functional AI as a framework for 3D design automation and walks through Augmenta’s work applying it to real building projects. The technical scope covers agentic AI for MEP path finding, generative modeling of complex structural and mechanical layouts, and progress toward a foundation model for building data. He also discusses what makes non-residential construction — commercial, medical, institutional, and mission critical — a particularly hard problem for AI systems to crack.

The conversation closes on a concrete milestone: two elementary schools in Michigan where the electrical system was fully modeled and delivered using AI-powered generative design, a first for the industry.

Hao (Richard) Zhang is VP of AI and R&D at Augmenta and a Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, and served as Technical Papers Chair for SIGGRAPH 2025.

Recorded at CDFAM Barcelona 2026 — https://cdfam.com/barcelona-2026/

Mike brings an unusual combination of deep physics intuition - PhD from Columbia studying geometry and electron behavior at the molecular scale - and operational experience from McKinsey and C-suite roles at Swiss aerospace and defense company RUAG. That background informs Arena’s approach to reimagining electromagnetic simulation across semiconductors, aerospace, and automotive sectors.

The conversation covers how Arena is building what they call Artificial Intuition for EM design, the limitations of current simulation approaches, and why a foundation model purpose-built for electromagnetism represents a fundamentally different path forward.

Watch the full presentation:

Full archive at cdfam.com/barcelona-2026/

Pablo Hermoso Moreno, Senior Solutions Architect at NVIDIA, joins CDFAM Barcelona 2026 to discuss how AI is reshaping Computer-Aided Engineering workflows.

Pablo draws on his background in aerospace engineering, aerodynamics at Mercedes F1, and cloud-scale AI at AWS to frame where CAE bottlenecks actually live - and what NVIDIA is doing about them. The conversation covers AI physics and surrogate models for real-time simulation feedback, the role of digital twins, and how agentic AI built on the NVIDIA NeMo stack is automating end-to-end engineering workflows.

He also walks through the AI-Q Blueprint, a production-ready enterprise research agent, and explains how the NeMo Agent Toolkit manages LLM call prioritization to reduce latency without additional hardware investment.

Full presentation and archive at cdfam.com/barcelona-2026/

The next CDFAM Computational Design Symposium takes place July 15-16, 2026 in Washington DC, and submissions are invited from industry, software developers, and academia.

Submit to Present

The event continues the CDFAM Computational Design Symposium format: in-person, technically focused, and structured around practical application of computational design, simulation, AI, and machine learning across engineering, architecture, and manufacturing.

The DC edition extends the program to include additional presentations and roundtable discussions aligned with U.S. government initiatives, with intended engagement between industry, academia, and public-sector stakeholders.

Why Present

CD/DC draws a technically advanced audience from industrial design, engineering, architecture software development, government, and research.

Presenters are expected to go beyond product positioning and engage with substance and evidence: methods, results, open problems, and lessons from deployment.

The format is designed for knowledge transfer and networking, not sales pitches.

Washington DC adds a specific dimension. The audience includes government agencies and national labs with active interest in how computational design, simulation, and AI-driven workflows are being deployed at scale.

These are people who understand the constraints you are working within, have likely encountered the same problems, and in many cases are positioned to collaborate, validate, or extend the work. That makes the conversation after the talk as valuable as the talk itself.

Washington DC adds a further dimension. The audience includes government agencies and national labs with active interest in how computational design, simulation, and AI-driven workflows are being deployed at scale. Presenting here is a direct line to stakeholders who influence procurement, funding, and policy at the program level.

If your work is technically rigorous, deployment-tested, or advancing the state of the field, participating at CDFAM in Washington DC may be the best opportunity to share and connect with others in your space.

Confirmed speakers are already in place from:

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Atomic Machines, Boston Dynamics, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, DARPA, Istari Digital, nTop, Luminary, Arena Physica, Neural Concept, Intact Solutions, Compute Maritime, Cognitive Design, Lexset, C-Infinity, Vinci, 4D.ai, and SysGit.

Space is limited. The program is filling quickly.

Proposal submissions and early bird registration is now available at cdfam.com.

Submit to Present

CD/DC is part of the CDFAM Computational Design Symposium series. Upcoming events: Washington DC, July 2026 / Tokyo, October 2026.

There is a version of computational design that stops at geometry. It produces forms that look organic, patterns that feel complex, outputs that are visually coherent. But the logic underneath is shallow style applied through software rather than behaviour derived from constraints.

Yuan Mu’s work at Nike Innovation is something different.

Her practice sits at the intersection of fabrication, material behavior, and design intent, not as separate concerns to be resolved in sequence, but as a single integrated system. Her background moves through animation, architecture, and textile engineering, and the through-line across all three is the same: understanding how things are made, and rebuilding that logic computationally.

In our interview ahead of her keynote at CDFAM Barcelona, Yuan talks about what it actually takes to close the gap between simulation and physical behavior, why the shift from analog to digital textile production is fundamentally about decoding craft rather than replacing it, and how end-to-end computational workflows change not just the process but the mentality of the people doing the work.

On the relationship between optimization and aesthetics:

“Most of the time, I’m careful not to rely on computational language as an automatic style. Instead, I embed additional layers of parameters into the system — not just geometric variables.

These parameters allow the form to evolve from constraints rather than from a preset visual language. When tuned intentionally, optimization doesn’t just improve performance; it refines the aesthetic.

The visual coherence emerges as a byproduct of logic — but it isn’t applied. It’s negotiated through the system.”

On the learning curve in additive and hybrid manufacturing:

“The learning curve in this field isn’t just about tools — it’s about understanding.

There’s a big difference between knowing and merely knowing of.

Today, software and workflows are more accessible than ever, but accessibility doesn’t automatically mean comprehension.”

On what end-to-end integration actually changes:

“That proximity to making changes your mentality. You become more invested, more curious, and more responsible.

The hands-on problem-solving mindset smooths the workflow. It does require lots of time and depth of knowledge, but I believe that shift toward integrated, end-to-end thinking is what will continue to transform the industry.”

These are not abstract observations. They reflect a specific, hard-won position on what computational design is actually for and what it demands from the people practicing it in a meaningful way.

Yuan will be presenting at CDFAM Barcelona on April 8-9, 2026.

Her keynote is a performance-oriented exploration of textile and apparel design: function-first and speculative, where computation is materially responsive rather than just visually applied.

Read the full interview here: Textile, Rewritten – Yuan Mu, Nike Innovation

Register to Attend

Register to attend CDFAM Barcelona to connect with Yuan pushing the adoption of computational design, AI and machine learning in engineering and architecture.

One role everyone is talking about

The most-viewed listing (by far) this month is a remote position posted via Handshake for a Rhino 3D Specialist to train AI models.

Not to use Rhino. Not to design with Grasshopper. To teach an AI how to do it. You know, replace yourself…

It is not a senior role. It does not require ‘industry experience.’ But it does require deep fluency in Rhino 3D workflows, the kind of software-specific knowledge that has historically been acquired over years of practice on real projects.

More Roles from CDFAM Presenters

BeyondMath, presenting at CDFAM Barcelona next month, have five roles in London across AI research, ML engineering, simulation, software, and a technical account director position, a sign the company is moving from deeper into commercial deployment.

Emmi AI, also presenting in Barcelona, is hiring simulation engineers with domain expertise in crash testing and injection moulding specifically reinforcing that training models need engineers who understand the physics, not just the AI.

Pasteur Labs posted a cluster of roles including Simulation Intelligence Scientist and Applied ML and Simulation Engineering, all fully remote.

Istari Digital is hiring a Digital Engineering Manager and Solutions Software Engineer in the DMV area, both focused on connected engineering infrastructure.

Compute Maritime, presenting NeuralShipper at Barcelona, added three roles including a Machine Learning Engineer and Graduate Naval Architect, both remote from London.

On the aerospace side, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems posted five roles across AI, additive manufacturing, and airframe design. Blue Origin added a Turbomachinery CFD Analyst and Additive Applications Engineer. SpaceX posted roles in aerodynamics, additive manufacturing software, and a Government Affairs Manager in Washington, DC. (side note: the next US CDFAM will be held in DC in July)

Atomic Machines is hiring for an AI CAD Engineer, a job title that would have sounded like science fiction five years ago, and is now one of the least controversial listings on the job board.

Se more at cdfam.com/careers.

If you are interested in working in this field in any way you should definitely Join us in Barcelon, April 8-9, 2026.

Each interview is worth reading on its own. Together, they give a glimpse of what April 8 and 9 is going to look like.

Nico Haag — PhysicsX

From Surrogates to Large Physics Models: Making AI-Native Engineering Work in Production

PhysicsX has roots in Formula One, the engineering problems they have taken on since, across aerospace, automotive, energy, and semiconductors, are not trivial, and the platform they’ve built to address them is worth understanding.

The interview with Nico covers the transition from traditional surrogate modeling to reusable physics intelligence, what the data pipeline for training aerodynamic models actually looks like, and how Large Physics Models are deployed in production rather than staged in a research environment.

His position on the human-in-the-loop question is direct: physics AI expands what engineers can do; it does not remove them from the process.

Read the interview

Hao (Richard) Zhang — Augmenta

Functional AI for 3D Design Automation: From Path Finding to Generative Modeling for Building Construction

Augmenta is working toward something that sounds straightforward until you look at what it actually requires: fully engineered, construction-ready 3D buildings generated from high-level inputs, with MEP systems that are geometrically valid, code-compliant, and buildable from day one.

Richard’s interview introduces a useful distinction between spatial AI and functional AI. The former asks whether a design fits. The latter asks whether it works.

That difference in framing has significant downstream consequences for training objectives, data strategy, and what constitutes a valid output.

Read the interview

Raul C. Llamas-Sandin — Universidad Europea de Madrid & Airbus Operations SL

Unlocking Large-Scale Structural Synthesis: High-Performance GPU Topology Optimization

Raul’s research addresses stress-constrained topology optimization at scales that are actually relevant to structural engineering: models running to hundreds of millions of elements on a single consumer-grade GPU.

The method avoids structural sensitivities, which improves both speed and robustness, while an outer control loop maintains constraint fulfillment throughout.

The interview covers multi-load configurations, mixed materials, self-weight, and tension-compression asymmetry.

He also speaks to the role of AI in accelerating code development and offers perspective from his parallel work in conceptual aircraft design at Airbus. It’s a grounded, technically specific conversation.

Read the interview

Join us in Barcelona

These three interviews represent a fraction of the program.

CDFAM Barcelona brings together practitioners and researchers across computational design, simulation, AI, and advanced manufacturing for two days of technical presentations industry gossip and tapas.

If you’ve been meaning to register, now is the time.

Register to attend — CDFAM Barcelona, April 8–9, 2026

This is a small-group, hands-on session limited to 20 participants, led by Max Gaedtke, leading thermal simulation engineer and developer from nTop.

Over three hours, participants will work through heat exchanger modeling workflows, simulation-ready design techniques, and best practices directly in the software.

ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, located on La Rambla in central Barcelona, is one of Europe’s leading schools of design and engineering and a fitting venue for a session like this.

Workshop details

• Instructor: Max Gaedtke, nTop

• Date: April 7, 2026, 15:00–18:00

• Location: ELISAVA, La Rambla 30–32, 08002 Barcelona, Room 209

• Capacity: 20 participants

If you’re already attending CDFAM Barcelona and work with thermal management, advanced manufacturing, or computational design workflows, this is a practical way to make use of the day before the symposium.

Space is limited. Register here.

Register for Workshop

Discounted CDFAM Barcelona tickets Thanks to nTop

A limited number of discounted tickets to CDFAM Barcelona (April 8–9) are available courtesy of nTop. Use code nTop50 at checkout for 50% off registration.

If you’re planning to attend the workshop, the symposium runs the following two days at the same location. Don’t wait on either; both have hard capacity limits.

Register for CDFAM Barcelona at 50% off

Last Day for Discounted Registration

Today is the final day to register for CDFAM Barcelona at the discounted rate of €800.

After today, the price moves to €1,000. The symposium runs April 8-9, 2026, at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), a research facility located directly on the Mediterranean waterfront.

The program is complete. Two full days of technical presentations and case studies spanning computational design, AI-driven engineering, advanced manufacturing, and architectural systems.

Register to Attend

Program Overview

The speaker roster covers a serious cross-section of where computational design and engineering AI are being applied in practice. A partial list:

The April 8th keynote will be delivered by Nike’s Yuan Mu on computational fabrication and algorithmically designed textiles with performance driven toolpathing for Flyknit and 3D printing.

NVIDIA’s Pablo Hermoso Moreno will present on AI surrogate models and agentic CAE workflows, drawing on his background in Formula 1 aerodynamics and cloud-scale AI deployment.

Nico Haag of PhysicsX will discuss the move from narrow surrogates toward large physics models, with external aerodynamics as the concrete case.

Quercus Hernandez of Emmi AI will present on large engineering models for injection moulding and an open-source framework for deploying engineering AI at industrial scale.

Max Gaedtke and Markus Lempke of nTop and Siemens Energy present a closed-loop parametric optimization workflow for turbine blade internal cooling, combining nTop’s implicit geometry engine with a GPU-native conjugate heat transfer solver that cuts time-to-solution by roughly 200x versus conventional finite-volume methods.

Pratap Ranade of Arena AI presents on building a foundation model for electromagnetism to accelerate hardware development across semiconductor, aerospace, and automotive applications, one of the harder unsolved problems in domain-specific engineering AI.

Michael Rosam of Quix presents on consolidating engineering test data and automating R&D analysis workflows, targeting the time lost to fragmented data and manual reporting across hardware development cycles.

Andrew Sartorelli and Tilman Steininger of Synera present across two sessions: the first examining practical AI agent applications in engineering workflows, from requirements extraction to automated simulation setup and reporting; the second delivered jointly with Juan De Dios Escribano Felguera of SEAT-CUPRA, demonstrating how computational design and automation are being applied to Body-in-White development in automotive production.

On the architecture and built environment side, Hao (Richard) Zhang of Augmenta will present on functional AI for 3D design automation, with case studies including the first buildings in the world with AI-generated electrical systems.

Verena Vogler of McNeel Europe will introduce a new ecological simulation framework for Rhino and Grasshopper.

Claudia Valverde of the University of Stuttgart’s IntCDC will present on architected porous structures designed to support thermal comfort for cavity-nesting wild bees in building envelopes, which is either a very niche research topic or a preview of where performance-driven design for and with autonomous agentic AI is headed. Possibly both.

Other confirmed speakers include representatives from Siemens Digital Industries, SimScale, ToffeeX, Synera, Gravity Sketch, Fraunhofer IGD, Tech Soft 3D, Saxion Hogeschool, Compute Maritime, BeyondMath, Cognitive Design Systems, Istari Digital, Pasteur Labs, Rafinex, Generative Engineering, Metisec, Romantic Technology, AiA Life Designers, Palace 3D, and David Burpee Design + Sequence Soles.

Day one of the Barcelona event closes with a networking session on the roof deck overlooking the ocean.

The full schedule is at cdfam.com/barcelona-2026.

Register Today

Discounted registration is €800 and closes today, March 15. Standard registration is €1,000 and is available until April 5.

Academic registration is €450 and also closes April 5. Group rates are available.

Contact info@cdfam.com for invoicing, direct transfer, or group discount requests.

Register at cdfam.com/register.

Register to Attend

Student Volunteers

We are still accepting student volunteer applications for CDFAM Barcelona.

Volunteers assist with event logistics across both days and receive full access to the program in exchange.

Roles include attendee check-in, session support, technical setup, documentation, and AV support during the sessions.

If you are a current student in design, engineering, architecture, or a related field, and you are available for both days, this is a fantastic way to attend a professional symposium that would otherwise cost €800. We do not cover transport or accomodation, but you will receive a limited edition t-shirt and our eternal thanks.

Apply at cdfam.com/crew.

Ticket Giveaway

The tag-a-colleague giveaway also closes today.

Head to the CDFAM LinkedIn post, tag a colleague in the comments. If you both follow CDFAM, you are both entered to win complimentary registrations.

Enter as many times as you like. The winner is drawn today.

Giveaway post: linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7438951785626685440

This edition of the CDFAM Careers Board includes organizations presenting at CDFAM Barcelona, April 8-9. Posting on the board is a benefit included with a speaking slot, and it serves a practical purpose: presenters get direct visibility with an engaged, expert audience, and candidates get early access to the teams and individuals doing the work before those roles are widely circulated elsewhere.

The following Barcelona presenters all have open roles on the board right now: Airbus, PhysicsX, nTop, BeyondMath, NIKE, ARENA-AI, Pasteur Labs, Emmi AI, Compute Maritime, Istari Digital, Tech Soft 3D, and Cognitive Design Systems.

See All Open Roles

Software and Platform Engineering

nTop, PhysicsX, and Divergent are hiring across software and platform engineering roles in New York, London, and Torrance, CA. Positions range from infrastructure and workload orchestration at nTop, to AI Workbench and Simulation Workbench engineers at PhysicsX, to a new grad Software Engineer with a mechanical engineering focus at Divergent. Bench is looking for a Founding Engineer in Computational Geometry in London.

Computational Design and Architecture

OXMAN, Heatherwick Studio, Ennead Architects, Foster + Partners, Lithium Designers GmbH, and Decibel ASD all have computational design openings across New York, London, and Germany. Autodesk has posted a Distinguished Architect role in Portland focused on Building Design Products and Desktop Transformation.

Simulation and AI/ML Engineering

PhysicsX has an extensive range of simulation, CFD, FEA, machine learning, and forward-deployed engineering roles across London, Singapore, and New York. BeyondMath, Emmi AI, and Pasteur Labs have simulation-focused roles open in London, and remotely. AVEVA, Thales, and ENSIA EXPERT have industrial AI and simulation roles in Boston, France, and Madrid. Airbus has multiple engineering roles in Getafe.

Generative and Computational Design for Product

NIKE has multiple roles open spanning generative design, computational design, and 3D footwear across Beaverton and broader innovation functions. Under Armour and Brooks Running are also hiring 3D footwear designers in Portland and Seattle.

Maritime, Defense and Deep Tech

Compute Maritime is hiring across naval architecture, machine learning, and full stack development. Istari Digital has several roles open spanning digital engineering, software, and machine learning. ARENA-AI has a broad range of electrical engineering, simulation, and software roles posted.

Data and Infrastructure

SOM, Arup, Atomic Machines, and Allen Control Systems have data, infrastructure, and innovation-focused roles open across Chicago, Frankfurt, Emeryville, and the broader US.

Research and Academic

ETH Zurich has a Research Engineer position open in Zurich. Zahner has a Research and Development Internship in Kansas City.

See All Open Roles

All roles are listed in full on the CDFAM Careers Board. If you have a position to promote to the community, submit it directly via the job posting form on the site.

There is no other event where you will find this concentration of organizations, spanning engineering AI, physics-native simulation, generative design, computational architecture, and advanced manufacturing software, all in the same room, all at the frontier of their respective fields, and evidently all looking to hire.

CDFAM Barcelona is two days. The program is focused, the group is small, and the access is direct.

If you are navigating a career move or looking to build relationships with the teams doing the most interesting work in computational design and engineering AI right now, this is where to be.

See Full Program for CDFAM Barcelona

Register to Attend