Photonic Test Development Engineer

Location: Boulder, CO; San Francisco Bay Area; Greater Boston; North Reading, Massachusetts; San Francisco, CA; Houston, TX; Munich, Bavaria, Germany; London Area

Salary: $140,000–$180,000 per year

Company

Well-funded AI hardware startup developing a new computing architecture that combines superconducting electronics with integrated photonics.

What you will do

• Own end-to-end optical test development for cryogenic photonic networks, from setup design through measurement validation.
• Design, build, and automate optical, electrical, and optoelectronic test systems for chip- and package-level devices.
• Develop automated fiber-to-chip coupling, alignment, instrument control, and data acquisition workflows.
• Characterize passive silicon nitride photonic components and active devices including lasers, amplifiers, photodetectors, and superconducting single-photon detectors.
• Measure insertion loss, coupling efficiency, waveguide loss, splitting ratio, bandwidth, and polarization extinction ratio.
• Analyze results, manage structured experimental data, and communicate findings to design, fabrication, and integration teams.

Requirements

• B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Optics, Photonics, or a related technical field.
• Hands-on experience designing, assembling, and automating optical test and characterization setups.
• Experience characterizing photonic or optoelectronic devices, including fiber coupling, grating couplers, waveguides, or photodetectors.
• Knowledge of laser device physics and practical laser characterization experience.
• Strong Python experience for test automation, instrument control, data acquisition, and analysis.
• Ability to independently develop experimental solutions and work effectively in a collaborative R&D environment.

Nice to have

• Experience with cryogenic measurements, cryostat-based systems, SNSPDs, or other single-photon detectors.
• Experience with silicon nitride or other integrated photonics platforms.
• Experience with automated photonic probe stations, wafer-level testing, fiber alignment, or chip-coupling systems.
• Experience characterizing integrated lasers, optical amplifiers, or other active photonic devices.
• Experience building test infrastructure and managing large characterization datasets in an early-stage hardware environment.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, rapidly growing hardware R&D team.
• Significant ownership over how new photonic technologies are tested and developed.
• Opportunity to build test infrastructure from the ground up rather than inherit an established platform.
• Direct collaboration across photonic design, fabrication, and integration.