Photonic Design & Fab Engineer

Location: United States; remote work is available across Eastern and Central Time Zones in the US, with cleanroom-based work associated with Boulder, Colorado and onsite roles in the San Francisco Bay Area also listed.

Salary: $150,000–$190,000 annual base salary; other compensation ranges and equity packages are also listed.

Company

A well-funded AI hardware startup emerging from the NIST research ecosystem, developing cryogenic photonic networks and superconducting computing hardware.

What you will do

• Own prototype fabrication runs in research cleanrooms and optimize processes for integrated photonic and superconducting devices.
• Fabricate silicon nitride photonics and superconducting devices, including SNSPDs.
• Design, simulate, and optimize passive photonic components such as grating couplers, splitters, mode converters, edge couplers, and optical I/O structures.
• Convert experimental processes into repeatable SOPs, Processes of Record, PDKs, component libraries, and design rules.
• Collaborate with photonics test, packaging, and systems integration teams to connect device performance with fabrication data.
• Use experimental feedback to improve device designs and accelerate design-build-test-learn cycles.

Requirements

• B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Optics, Photonics, Materials Science, or a related technical field.
• Hands-on experience with microfabrication, nanofabrication, or semiconductor processing.
• Experience with silicon photonics, silicon nitride, superconducting electronics, or related device platforms.
• Strong understanding of passive photonic component design and experience with electromagnetic simulation tools such as Ansys Lumerical or Tidy3D.
• Knowledge of photonic layout, design rule checking, tapeout concepts, and tools such as KLayout, Luceda, or Cadence.
• Ability to independently lead experimental fabrication work and collaborate across design, test, packaging, and systems teams.

Nice to have

• Experience fabricating SNSPDs or other superconducting devices.
• Experience with heterogeneous or hybrid integration, including bump bonding or fusion bonding.
• Experience transferring processes to external fabs or working with commercial foundries.
• Experience developing PDKs, component libraries, SOPs, or Processes of Record.
• Experience in university cleanrooms, national laboratories, or advanced commercial R&D facilities.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, rapidly growing hardware team with direct ownership across device design, fabrication, process development, and integration.
• Work on a new computing architecture combining superconducting electronics with integrated photonics.
• Backed by $30.7M in seed funding, venture investment, and government-supported research programs.
• Remote work is available within specified US time zones for applicable arrangements.