Director of Software Manufacturing (Photonics)

Location: San Jose, United States

Company

hirify.global is a well-funded photonics startup building optical interconnects and photonic engines for AI supercomputing.

What you will do

• Define and lead the software roadmap for manufacturing systems supporting optical transceivers and photonic devices.
• Architect scalable test, calibration, data, telemetry, logging, and traceability infrastructure for NPI and high-volume manufacturing.
• Drive software solutions for wafer probing, module testing, optical alignment, DSP tuning, system validation, and final testing.
• Improve yield, throughput, cycle time, reliability, quality, and manufacturing cost through data-driven analysis and automated failure detection.
• Coordinate manufacturing software integration with MES systems, factory automation platforms, foundries, OSATs, contract manufacturers, and customer validation environments.
• Build, lead, and scale a software manufacturing and test engineering team while establishing development, release, and deployment practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant work in manufacturing, test, or production systems.
• 5+ years of experience leading engineering teams.
• Strong background in manufacturing software, test automation, and production systems for semiconductor, photonics, or hardware products.
• Experience taking products from NPI to high-volume manufacturing, including yield ramp and production scaling, and working with contract manufacturers, OSATs, or global manufacturing partners.
• Strong programming skills in Python, C, C++, or similar languages, plus experience with MES systems, data pipelines, manufacturing analytics, and manufacturing KPIs.

Nice to have

• Experience with optical transceivers such as QSFP, QSFP-DD, or OSFP and high-speed modules from 400G through 1.6T.
• Background in silicon photonics, advanced packaging, or optical module manufacturing.
• Experience building factory automation and test infrastructure at scale.
• Familiarity with DSP-based systems, calibration flows, and optical performance tuning.
• Experience supporting hyperscalers or Tier 1 data center customers and working in fast-paced startup environments.

Culture & Benefits

• Executive-level compensation with meaningful equity participation.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Opportunity to build and lead a critical engineering function at a rapidly scaling photonics company.
• Direct impact on next-generation AI and hyperscale infrastructure.
• Collaboration with photonics and systems engineering specialists.