Senior Photonics Test & Automation Engineer (Space)

Location: Los Angeles, CA. The position requires a U.S. person as defined by ITAR or eligibility for a federally issued export control license.

Base salary: $150,000–$220,000 per year, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global develops high-power satellite platforms and photonic payloads for missions spanning LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar space, and deep space.

What you will do

• Design, build, and own automated wafer-, die-, and module-level PIC test stations with optical and RF probing, fiber-array alignment, and swept-laser measurements.
• Develop reusable Python test automation, instrument drivers, version control, CI, and shared data pipelines for design, packaging, and reliability teams.
• Integrate PIC test stations with free-space optical testbeds, including beam delivery and steering, spatial light modulators, phase screens, cameras, and wavefront sensors.
• Characterize passive and active photonic devices, including waveguides, couplers, filters, modulators, photodetectors, and heaters, with high-speed electro-optic measurements.
• Establish design-for-test standards, correlate measurements with simulation, maintain statistical process control and gauge R&R, and support reliability campaigns.
• Scale testing through parallelization, reduced test time, operator procedures, production handoff, and mentoring of engineers and technicians.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, physics, optics, or a related technical field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience testing photonic integrated circuits or optoelectronic components, including probing, fiber alignment, and optical test equipment.
• Experience building automated test stations from scratch using Python for instrument control, test frameworks, and data analysis.
• Hands-on free-space optics experience, including alignment, beam characterization, cameras, or wavefront sensors.
• Must be a U.S. person under ITAR or otherwise eligible for a federally issued export control license.

Nice to have

• Advanced degree in a related field.
• Experience integrating free-space optical setups into automated testing, writing test plans, and defining test structures with designers.
• Experience with atmospheric turbulence, adaptive optics, free-space optical communications, turbulence emulation, spatial light modulators, phase screens, or outdoor and field optical testing.
• High-speed electro-optic characterization to 50+ GHz using lightwave component analyzers, VNAs, BERTs, or sampling oscilloscopes.
• Experience with commercial photonic probers and automated test equipment such as FormFactor, MPI, or ficonTEC.
• Experience with polarization-diverse and phase-sensitive optical measurements, environmental or radiation testing of space hardware, production testing, manufacturing execution systems, or SQL test databases.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced environment within a high-growth Series D-funded company.
• Opportunity to develop and deploy photonic payloads for space missions and establish first-generation photonics test standards.
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical, dental, and vision coverage, life insurance, and paid parental leave.
• Equity in the company.
• Reasonable accommodations are available for applications and interviews.