Copenhagen, DK

Magnus Strandgaard

Computational Chemist · Software/Data Engineer · PhD

Software Engineer combining a rigorous scientific background with enterprise cloud experience. PhD in computational chemistry with a track record of developing end-to-end Python/ML software workflows for generative molecular design and property prediction, paired with enterprise cloud experience (AWS, Terraform, CI/CD) supporting a 1M+ user application. Driven by a strong passion to build computational systems that accelerate the green energy transition and healthcare.

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01

Experience

2025 – presentCopenhagen, DK
Linux Operations Engineer
Netcompany
Details
  • Maintained and extended the AWS infrastructure for a 1M+ user application across 11 environments (10 dev replicas + production), defining compute, networking, and data resources as code in Terraform with per-environment workspaces and AWS SSO access.
  • Became the team's lead Terraform developer within 3 months of joining. Led the zero-downtime migration of an enterprise solution (1,000+ live resources) to a managed Terraform state, establishing rigorous code review practices and mitigating edge cases for seamless production deployment.
  • Developed and maintained automated CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps and Jenkins, integrating strict policy checks and testing to ensure high-quality, production-ready code delivery.
  • Python development for automation of internal processes. Including ingestion and processing of critical data. Engineered a robust Python data-processing pipeline that replaced a legacy service, resolving performance bottlenecks and reducing cloud spend by ~$3,500/month while ensuring secure data handling.
2024 – 2025Copenhagen, DK
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dept. of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen
Details
  • Designed and operated data pipelines across 4 HPC clusters to ingest, curate, and validate 100K+ molecular records from the Cambridge Structural Database, enabling structure–property analysis of transition-metal complexes.
  • Built predictive ML workflows combining molecular fingerprints and graph neural networks to predict chemical properties of 3D structures, with accuracy gains over baseline models. Orchestrated distributed GPU training via SLURM and the WandB MLOps tool.
  • Developed a novel synthetic accessibility scoring tool in Python with C++ bindings for generative molecular design pipelines.
2021 – 2024Copenhagen, DK
PhD Researcher
Dept. of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen
Details
  • Developed end-to-end in silico molecular discovery pipelines coupling quantum chemistry with generative ML models (genetic algorithms, variational autoencoders) for catalyst design and compound optimization, screening thousands of candidates with RDKit, Pandas, and SQLite.
  • Collaborated with the University of Oslo theoretical chemistry group to implement a variational autoencoder (VAE) for molecular inverse design, training PyTorch models on HPC GPUs to generate novel transition-metal complexes.
  • Served as HPC cluster administrator for the physical chemistry department (50+ active users), managing Linux environments, SLURM job scheduling, and reproducible computational workflows.
  • Created and maintained 4 open-source research repositories on GitHub as lead developer.
  • Mentored 60+ undergraduate students as teaching assistant for physical chemistry and mathematics courses.
2021 – 2021Kongens Lyngby, DK
Research Assistant
Dept. of Energy, Technical University of Denmark
Details
  • Implemented a Message Passing Neural Network (MPNN) in PyTorch to predict forces and energies of magnesium battery cathode candidates, enabling molecular dynamics simulations of next-generation energy-storage materials.
02

Education

2021 – 2024
PhD, Computational Chemistry
University of Copenhagen
2018 – 2021
MSc, Physics and Nanotechnology
Technical University of Denmark
2015 – 2018
BSc, Physics and Nanotechnology
Technical University of Denmark
03

Technical Skills

Languages & Engineering Python (Expert) · FastAPI · REST APIs · Unit Testing (Pytest) · SQL & NoSQL (RDS/DynamoDB) · Git · Docker · CI/CD · Familiar with: TypeScript, React, Tailwind, C++, Golang
Data Science & ML PyTorch · Scikit-learn · SciPy · NumPy · Pandas · MLOps (WandB, MLflow) · Familiar with: LangChain, dbt
Scientific Visualization Streamlit · Plotly · Matplotlib
Cloud & Platform AWS (Full Stack) · Terraform · SLURM (HPC admin) · Proxmox · Ansible · Jenkins · Azure DevOps · Linux · Familiar with: Nextflow, Apache Airflow, Azure
Cheminformatics RDKit · Molecular Embeddings · QSPR/QSAR · ORCA · xTB · VASP · ADF
AI-Assisted Development Claude Code · Gemini CLI · GitHub Copilot · building and shipping production software with AI coding agents
Spoken Danish & Norwegian (native) · English (fluent) · Spanish (basic)
04

Publications

A Deep Generative Model for the Inverse Design of Transition Metal Ligands and Complexes
Magnus Strandgaard, Linjordet T, Kneiding H, Burnage AL, Nova A, Jensen JH, Balcells D
JACS Au · 2025 · doi.org/10.1021/jacsau.5c00242
Discovery of molybdenum-based nitrogen fixation catalysts with genetic algorithms
Magnus Strandgaard, Seumer J, Jensen JH
Chemical Science · 2024 · doi.org/10.1039/D4SC02227K
Genetic algorithm-based re-optimization of the Schrock catalyst for dinitrogen fixation
Magnus Strandgaard, Seumer J, Benediktsson B, Bhowmik A, Vegge T, Jensen JH
PeerJ Physical Chemistry · 2023 · doi.org/10.7717/peerj-pchem.30
SMILES All Around: Structure to SMILES conversion for Transition Metal Complexes
Rasmussen MH, Magnus Strandgaard, Seumer J, Hemmingsen LK, Frei A, Balcells D, Jensen JH
Journal of Cheminformatics · 2025 · doi.org/10.1186/s13321-025-01008-1
05

Projects & Homelab

Self-hosted Proxmox infrastructure

A self-hosted Proxmox server orchestrating VMs and LXC containers for web and IT services on Linux, with provisioning and configuration automated via Ansible and Terraform.

Full-stack AWS-hosted Web Application LIVE

React / TypeScript / Tailwind frontend, Python / FastAPI backend. Architected a near-zero-cost serverless AWS environment with Terraform, directing implementation with Claude Code. Live at games.drmaggi.com.