Optical Systems Engineer (AI Hardware)

Location: On-site in San Jose, United States. Relocation support is available for candidates moving to San Jose.

Company

hirify.global develops inference-focused AI hardware by co-designing chips, racks, software, and manufacturing systems for high throughput and low latency.

What you will do

• Lead optical link architecture and system design for next-generation accelerator systems.
• Evaluate and integrate CPO, NPO, OCI, LPO, XPO, and other interconnect technologies into the product roadmap.
• Drive optical prototypes through definition, validation, and transition to volume production.
• Partner with Signal Integrity, PCB, ASIC, Thermal, and Mechanical Engineering teams on electrical-optical interfaces for high-performance AI servers.
• Define multi-rack optical interconnect requirements, including topology, reach, connectors, and fiber management.
• Bring up and debug optical interfaces using BERTs, sampling scopes, and OSAs, while defining manufacturing test strategies and optics documentation.

Requirements

• 5–10 years of experience in optical interconnect, transceiver, or photonic system design for high-density compute systems.
• Expertise in CPO, NPO, OCI, LPO, XPO, and related optical interconnect architectures.
• Strong optical link engineering fundamentals, including link budgets, IL/RL, OSNR, eye diagrams, jitter, BER, and FEC margining.
• Working knowledge of laser sources, modulators, TIAs, DSPs, retimers, and 100G/200G-per-lane PAM4 host interfaces.
• Experience with OSFP and QSFP-DD pluggable solutions, photonic-electronic co-design, advanced packaging, PIC-based subsystems, and optical connectors.
• Understanding of high-power liquid-cooled AI servers, cluster-scale optical fabrics, and industry standards including OCI, Open CPX, OIF, and UCIe.

Culture & Benefits

• Fully in-person engineering team based in San Jose and Taipei.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus a $500 monthly credit for waiving medical benefits.
• $2,000 monthly housing subsidy for employees living within walking distance of the San Jose office.
• Relocation support for moves to San Jose, wellness benefits, and daily lunch and dinner.
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification.
• Engineering and research responsibilities are closely integrated, with technical staff expected to contribute to both.