What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Research Geophysicist position at BGP?
Location: Houston, Texas
Organization: BGP Houston Innovation Center
Employment Type: Full-Time
About the RoleBGP Houston Innovation Center is looking for an exceptional Research / Senior Research Geophysicist to join our core R&D team in Houston.
We are building the next generation of BGP's seismic imaging and inversion technology, with a particular focus on full-waveform inversion (FWI), wave-equation imaging, high-performance scientific computing, and AI-enabled computational geophysics.
Rather than simply extending legacy seismic software, our goal is to develop a modern computational framework that enables geophysicists to move rapidly from new physics and algorithms to large-scale field applications. Our next-generation platform will leverage technologies including Devito/DevitoPRO, modern CPU/GPU computing, distributed HPC, and AI/ML.
This position is intended for someone who wants to work at the intersection of geophysics, mathematics, scientific computing, and real-world seismic applications.
The successful candidate will have the opportunity to contribute directly to the technical foundation of BGP's next-generation FWI and imaging platform.
What You Will Work OnYou will conduct research and development in one or more of the following areas:
- Full-waveform inversion (FWI), including acoustic, VTI/TTI, Q/viscoacoustic, elastic, and multi-parameter FWI
- Advanced seismic imaging, including RTM, LSRTM, reflection FWI, and wave-equation-based imaging
- Numerical wave propagation and PDE-based computational methods
- Optimization, regularization, preconditioning, and objective-function design for large-scale inverse problems
- Land and marine FWI, including complex near-surface conditions and topography
- 4D seismic imaging and inversion
- AI/ML-assisted FWI, velocity model building, seismic imaging, and inversion workflows
- Scientific machine learning and physics-guided AI
- High-performance implementation of seismic algorithms on modern CPU/GPU systems
- Development of next-generation computational geophysics workflows using Devito/DevitoPRO and related technologies
- Develop innovative algorithms for seismic imaging, velocity model building, and full-waveform inversion.
- Translate mathematical and geophysical ideas into scalable computational implementations.
- Develop and validate new methods using both synthetic and large-scale field seismic datasets.
- Work closely with geophysicists, computational scientists, and software engineers to move research ideas toward production applications.
- Contribute to the development of BGP's next-generation FWI/RTM computational platform.
- Explore modern scientific-computing approaches that improve research and development productivity.
- Investigate the integration of AI/ML with physics-based seismic imaging and inversion.
- Evaluate new algorithms based on both geophysical quality and computational performance.
- Contribute to technical publications, patents, internal technology development, and client applications.
- Collaborate with BGP research teams and academic/industry partners internationally.
- Ph.D. or expected Ph.D. in Geophysics, Applied Mathematics, Computational Science, Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field.
- Strong background in at least one of the following:
- Full-waveform inversion
- Seismic imaging
- Wave propagation
- Inverse problems
- Computational geophysics
- Scientific computing
- Strong mathematical and analytical skills.
- Programming experience in Python, C/C , Julia, or comparable scientific-computing languages.
- Ability and willingness to learn new computational technologies and work across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to conduct independent research.
Experience in one or more of the following would be highly valued:
- Acoustic, anisotropic, viscoacoustic, or elastic FWI
- Multi-parameter inversion
- RTM / LSRTM / reflection FWI
- Large-scale optimization and inverse problems
- Land seismic imaging and complex near-surface problems
- OBN or 4D seismic applications
- Devito, JUDI, or other PDE/scientific-computing frameworks
- GPU/HPC computing, MPI, distributed computing, or large-scale numerical simulation
- PyTorch, JAX, or other machine-learning frameworks
- Physics-informed or physics-guided machine learning
- Experience working with large field seismic datasets
- Strong publication, patent, or industrial R&D record
Experience with Devito is a plus, but is not required.
Who We Are Looking ForWe are particularly interested in candidates who are not limited by traditional boundaries between geophysics, software, and computational science.
You may be a geophysicist interested in modern computing, an applied mathematician working on inverse problems, or a computational scientist interested in seismic wave physics.
What matters most is your ability to understand difficult physical problems, develop new ideas, and turn those ideas into working computational solutions.
Why Join UsThis is an opportunity to join BGP Houston Innovation Center at an important stage in the development of our next-generation technology platform.
Rather than maintaining an established legacy system, you will have the opportunity to help design and build new technology from the ground up, work with large-scale real-world seismic datasets, and see research ideas progress toward industrial applications.
The Houston team operates at the intersection of advanced research, international collaboration, and real-world geophysical challenges, providing significant room for technical impact and professional growth.
- If you are excited about the future of FWI, computational geophysics, AI, and high-performance scientific computing, we would like to hear from you.