National Institute of Standards and Technology | Boulder, United States | Posted June 17, 2026
Position Overview
Summary NIST's Time & Frequency Division is hiring an Optical Clock Research Physicist to develop optical lattice clocks for advanced timekeeping applications. We need a talented and ambitious physicist to lead project development, working with a team of experts to advance state of the art performance. This notice is issued under direct-hire authority to recruit new talent to occupations for which NIST has a severe shortage of candidates. Responsibilities NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) sets the definitive U.S. standards for nearly every kind of measurement employed in commerce and research, spanning more than 20 orders of magnitude. This position is for an Optical Clock Research Physicist within the Neutral Atom Optical Clocks Group, which performs research on ultracold atomic systems for future standards of time and frequency, for the calibration of International Atomic Time, and for probing fundamental physical theories through precision optical frequency measurements. ...