Extreme-Scale, Nano & Fundamental Engineering
/Senior leadership
Fundamental Physics Lead
What this division works on, who works on it, and the written standard every result meets before it leaves.
Compensation
Engagement
Full-Time
Permanent role. Full-time commitment. This is an on-site role at Kolkata. It is not remote and not hybrid.
Scope of role
Set direction within your domain. Build and mentor a team. Own outcomes at the function level.
Research classification
Proving results and building the mathematical structures other work is expressed in. Theorems and proofs, well-posedness and convergence results, formal statements of method.
Speculative frontier research. An open question that no current experiment can decide. Nothing in this area should be described, by us or by you, as a validated or available technology.
Scale range 10^-100 m to 10^-35 m
Nothing in this division is experimentally accessible. The Planck length is roughly 10^-35 m; the smallest distance any experiment has probed is around 10^-19 m, sixteen orders of magnitude larger. The frameworks worked on here are mathematically serious and experimentally undecided, and no result produced here should be described, by us or by you, as a demonstrated physical fact or an available technology. Scientific integrity is a condition of every role in this department. Assumptions are stated separately from conclusions. Uncertainty is reported. Negative and inconclusive results are written up, not discarded. Speculative work is labelled speculative, including when that makes it less impressive. Fabrication, falsification, and presenting a simulation as a measurement end an engagement here.
Scale bands are a research classification, not a claim of experimental reach. Most of this span cannot be probed by any apparatus that exists: nothing below about 10^-19 m has been measured directly, and anything at 10^26 m or beyond is inferred from observation rather than engineered. Every opportunity states the kind of work it actually is.
01 — The role
Why this role exists at EduRankAI
Department of Extreme-Scale, Nano & Fundamental Engineering, Division D01: Ultra-Fundamental & Mathematical Physics. This division asks what a physical theory would have to look like at scales no instrument reaches. It produces derivations, consistency results and reproducible computations, and it states in every result which parts are established, which are inferred, and which are conjecture. It builds no apparatus and it makes no engineering claim. This position: What this division works on, who works on it, and the written standard every result meets before it leaves. Scale range for this work: 10^-100 m to 10^-35 m. Research classification: Mathematical. Proving results and building the mathematical structures other work is expressed in. Evidential standing: Speculative frontier research. An open question that no current experiment can decide. Nothing in this area should be described, by us or by you, as a validated or available technology. Nothing in this division is experimentally accessible. The Planck length is roughly 10^-35 m; the smallest distance any experiment has probed is around 10^-19 m, sixteen orders of magnitude larger. The frameworks worked on here are mathematically serious and experimentally undecided, and no result produced here should be described, by us or by you, as a demonstrated physical fact or an available technology. Scale bands are a research classification, not a claim of experimental reach. Most of this span cannot be probed by any apparatus that exists: nothing below about 10^-19 m has been measured directly, and anything at 10^26 m or beyond is inferred from observation rather than engineered. Every opportunity states the kind of work it actually is. Level 6 (Lead). A research programme or an engineering area: what gets worked on, by whom, and to what standard.
02 — The work
What you will own
- 01 Formulate rigorous mathematical models of the systems the division studies, with assumptions stated explicitly.
- 02 Investigate the internal consistency of theoretical frameworks and record precisely where each one breaks.
- 03 Develop numerical calculations and simulations where a closed-form result is unavailable.
- 04 Derive analytic results and check them against limiting cases that are already known.
- 05 Quantify what a result depends on, and identify what would falsify it.
- 06 Build reproducible research software that another person can run and obtain the same numbers from.
- 07 Classify every claim as established, inferred, or speculative, in writing, before it is published anywhere.
- 08 Decide what this area works on, who works on it, and the standard the work is held to.
- 09 Be accountable for the honesty of what leaves the division, including under time pressure.
- 10 Recruit, develop and retain the people the programme needs.
03 — The expertise
What we look for
04 — The bar
Who thrives here
- → Education: Doctorate or an equivalent research record.
- → Experience: 8 to 12 years, with a record of directing work carried out by other people.
- → Scope of the role: A research programme or an engineering area: what gets worked on, by whom, and to what standard.
- → Must have: Can derive the Euler-Lagrange equations for a field theory from its action and state the symmetries that follow. Also: Fluent with tensor calculus in index and index-free notation, including covariant differentiation and curvature.
- → Portfolio: at least one piece of work — code, a written result, a thesis chapter, a preprint — that somebody outside your institution can read and assess. It does not need to be published.
Terms of Engagement
How working time works at this level
No counted hours. A five-day week with a four-hour overlap window, plus responsibility for the coverage of your area — including who is on call and when.
Type
Lead
Working days
5 per week
Rest days
2 per week
Hours counted
No
Daily overlap
4h
Measured by
The outcomes of the area you lead, the reliability of its coverage, and the growth of the people in it.
Where this stands legally
Hours are not counted at this level. The statutory ceiling of 9 hours a day and 48 a week remains the limit the role is designed to fit inside: if the work cannot be done within a normal week, the scope is wrong, not the person.
The full per-level model is published at Working Hours by Level.
05 — Hiring process
What to expect after you apply
- 01
Application review
Every application is read personally within five business days. We respond either way.
- 02
Take-home or live exercise
Role-specific. Time-boxed. Real problems we are actually working on, not invented puzzles.
- 03
Conversations
Deep technical and values conversations with the team you would join. No trick questions. No panel ambushes.
- 04
Offer or honest no
If yes: digital offer letter, signed in-portal, transparent terms. If no: written feedback if you want it.
The standard
What you deliver, and how it is judged
Deliverables
- Written derivations with assumptions, limits of validity and known failure modes stated.
- Reproducible computational notebooks or codes with a fixed environment and seeded runs.
- Internal notes that a colleague in another division can act on without a conversation.
- A statement, for each result, of what observation or calculation would contradict it.
Evaluation criteria
- Correctness of derivation, checked against known limits.
- Reproducibility: does the code produce the reported number on another machine.
- Clarity about what is assumed versus what is concluded.
- Honesty about negative and inconclusive results, which are reported rather than discarded.
Preferred, not required
Nothing in this list is a bar to applying.
Tools you would work in
Reports to: Department Director
Works with: D02, D09, D15
Before you start
What we will collect. What it costs. What we will not do with it.
We will collect
- Name, email, phone — Account + application updates. No marketing.
- Resume / portfolio link — Human review of your work.
- Date + place of birth — Identity verification only.
- Your written responses — Selection rubric. Read by humans.
- Government ID (later) — Anti-fraud at offer / interview stage. Not at signup.
We will never
- Sell your data
- Share with third-party recruiters
- Use for advertising
- Train models on it
- Send marketing email
Our situation
EduRankAI is a small, independent organization building long-term capabilities in educational intelligence, advanced AI systems, and research infrastructure. We take no advertiser money, no donations with strings attached, and no investor pressure on hiring decisions. Applying is free, and every application is read by a human — recruitment, technical, academic and leadership teams. It buys us the right to be honest.
Ready to apply?
We read every application personally. If you are the right person for this role — regardless of pedigree, background, or where you are based — you will hear back from us within five business days.
Apply through this page. You will be asked for your education, your experience, and links to work we can actually read — a repository, a write-up, a thesis chapter, a preprint. Send the piece of work you would defend, not the one with the best title. If a result in it turned out to be wrong, say so; we would rather read that than not know. Every application is read by a person. We assess applications on evidence of the work. We do not filter on institution, on age, on gender, on caste, on religion, on disability, or on where you are from. If any part of this process is inaccessible to you, tell us and we will change it for you.
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