Photonic Design & Fab Engineer (AI Hardware)

Location: Boulder, Colorado, United States

Salary: $140,000–$190,000 per year

Company

Develops a new AI computing architecture combining superconducting electronics with integrated photonics, including cryogenic photonic networks, lasers, and superconducting photon detectors.

What you will do

• Own prototype fabrication runs in a research cleanroom environment.
• Develop and optimize fabrication processes for integrated photonic and superconducting devices, including SNSPDs.
• Design, simulate, and optimize passive silicon nitride photonic components such as grating couplers, splitters, mode converters, edge couplers, and optical I/O structures.
• Translate experimental processes into standard operating procedures and stable Processes of Record.
• Develop and maintain PDKs, component libraries, and photonic design rules.
• Correlate device performance with fabrication data and drive improvements across design, test, packaging, and systems integration.

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 a related device platform.
• Strong understanding of passive photonic component design and 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 repeatable fabrication processes, PDKs, component libraries, or design rules.
• Experience in university cleanrooms, national laboratories, or advanced commercial R&D facilities.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, rapidly growing hardware team.
• High-ownership work spanning device design, fabrication, process development, and integration.
• Opportunity to influence rapid design-build-test-learn cycles.
• Work supported by venture funding and government-backed research programs.