Systems Engineer (Silicon Photonics)

Location: Austin, Texas; full-time onsite position

Salary: $185K–$215K per year, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global is an early-stage AI hardware company developing silicon photonics and programmable metasurface technology for energy-efficient optical computing and large-scale AI inference.

What you will do

• Own and maintain the end-to-end optical and electrical link and power budgets for the optical vector-matrix multiplication signal path.
• Build behavioral models of the complete transmitter, channel, and receiver path, including optical, analog, quantization, and algorithmic effects.
• Allocate NMSE, SNR, and SNDR targets across optical, analog, quantization, and algorithmic domains.
• Model noise, distortion, jitter, quantization, crosstalk, mismatch, and nonlinearity, and quantify their impact on system accuracy.
• Analyze architecture changes affecting TOPS, TOPS/W, latency, power, and complexity.
• Run Monte Carlo, corner, and time-domain simulations, correlate results with laboratory and silicon measurements, and refine models when discrepancies occur.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a closely related field, with emphasis on communication theory, signal processing, or mixed-signal systems.
• 5+ years of experience in communication systems architecture, link-budget or signal-chain modeling, or optical and high-speed electrical communication systems.
• Deep knowledge of modulation, equalization, synchronization, estimation, quantization effects, and coding gain in end-to-end performance budgets.
• Expert proficiency in Python with NumPy/SciPy and/or MATLAB/Simulink for behavioral modeling and statistical or time-domain analysis.
• Demonstrated ownership of an optical or RF link budget or equivalent SNR/noise budget, including system-level allocation and trade-off analysis.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for collaboration with analog, digital, photonic, and software engineers.

Nice to have

• Experience with optical communication links, coherent or direct-detection architectures, or high-speed Ethernet, PCIe, or OIF-CEI systems.
• System-level modeling of ADCs and DACs, including quantization, sampling, and multi-device synchronization.
• Familiarity with Cadence Virtuoso and Spectre, laboratory characterization, silicon bring-up, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, or optical transceiver systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work with analog, photonic, digital, and software engineering specialists.
• 100% coverage of base health plan premiums for employees and dependents, plus HSA contributions.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• 401(k) matching and stock option opportunities.
• Dental, vision, life, hospital, critical illness, and accident insurance options.