Graduate Experimental Nuclear Physicist - Graduate Scheme 2025

The salary for this role is £32,729.

This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions.

UKAEA’s two-year graduate scheme is split by 80% of your time developing both your general work-related skills and professional qualifications and 20% of your working time dedicated to graduate training and development.  Within the graduate training and development, there is a core suite of activities designed to develop your professional and business skills. Elements of this programme are flexible and can be tailored to your personal development needs and to those of your specific job role. 

The Role

The Fusion Technology Division (FTD) is taking the UK’s fusion expertise into the age of power plant delivery with a vision to enable the development and qualification of Fusion device equipment for service in commercial fusion power plant. Across the Culham and South Yorkshire sites, we combine a suite of unique testing facilities and capabilities for advanced engineering and world-leading research for international and UK fusion programmes.  

Across all the groups and activities within FT, the following themes remain common:  

• Developing and/or incubating new technologies and capabilities to support the commercialisation of Fusion. 
• An increasing focus on verification and qualification, by digital, analytical, deterministic, and probabilistic techniques.  
• Up-scaling activities, from micro-scale verification to prototypical-scale qualification.   
• Serving a dual role as both service provider to and informed customer for commercial Fusion. 
• Ensuring specialist recruitment and training satisfy a broad range of Fusion stakeholder needs. 

The Graduate Experimental Nuclear Physicist would be based in the Applied Radiation Technology (ART) group, which is one of several groups within the FTD. The Graduate Experimental Nuclear Physicist role is to contribute to the successful delivery of services and R&D provided by the RADLab (Radiological Assay and Detection Lab) through deployment of nuclear diagnostics (gamma or neutron detectors) to gather and analyse data, and to support the maintenance and development of nuclear diagnostics for the realisation of fusion power plants.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Perform a variety of technical tasks designed to provide experience & familiarization with staff, methods, practices, & programs of the organisation. 
• This may include designing, operating, maintaining & demonstrating equipment. 
• Develop knowledge and understanding of fusion relevant topics and apply this learning to assigned projects. 
• Identify areas where improvements could be made to experimental apparatus, process plant systems and to operational practices and methodologies. 
• Liaise with other teams and groups to build networks and to ensure effective collaboration. 
• Ensuring that the Safety, Health, and Environment culture and working practices are in alignment with the UKAEA requirements. 
• Promote and support the broader Fusion Technology Division, to ensure project success. 
• Engage in active information sharing with staff and students, define and oversee Early Career projects. 
• Adapt communication style to suit a broad range of situations and receivers.  
• Champion and share best practice, to promote respect, inclusion, and opportunity across UKAEA.  
• Work in accordance with UKAEA policy and undertake any other reasonable tasks or duties requested by Management.
• Required to work with ionising radiation as a non-classified monitored worker under the ionising radiation regulations.

Essential Requirements:

• Successful completion of a relevant degree or equivalent level in a relevant STEM Discipline; within the past 2 years. 
• Demonstrable ability to question existing scientific models, able to express this clearly through high quality written reports.  
•  IT literate, including Microsoft Office (e.g. Excel and SharePoint).
• Demonstrate excellent interpersonal and communication skills. 
• Good planning, organising and time management skills. 
• Discreet & professional approach to technical or scientific activities. 
• Manage own development towards building knowledge & skills. 
• Excellent presentation skills. 

A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/

We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly individuals from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.