Analog/Mixed Signal Architect

Job Title

Analog/Mixed Signal Architect

Role Summary

Design and architect high-speed analog and mixed-signal building blocks for optical transceivers used in large-scale photonic AI compute systems. The role partners with analog, digital, photonics, and software teams to define architectures, produce technical specifications, and validate solutions for production silicon.

Work directly with the Chief Scientist and cross-disciplinary teams to model performance, power, and area tradeoffs, and to represent the company’s technical leadership at conferences.

Experience Level

Senior — architect-level role with leadership responsibility in analog/mixed-signal system and circuit architecture.

Responsibilities

Own architectural definition and high-level design of analog/mixed-signal subsystems for optical interconnects and transceivers.

• Propose and evaluate AMS circuit block architectures for high-speed designs (50G+): drivers, TIAs, equalizers, ADC/DACs, PLLs, CDRs.
• Provide performance, power, and area estimates and trade-off analyses for analog devices within the Passage photonics engine.
• Collaborate with photonics and digital teams to define high-bandwidth optical interconnect solutions and interfaces.
• Author, review, and validate architectural specifications and design documents for engineering teams.
• Model and analyze system-level behavior with cross-disciplinary teams; iterate on architecture based on simulation and measurement data.
• Present technical work externally at conferences and represent the company’s engineering capabilities.

Requirements

Key technical skills, tooling experience, and professional behaviors required and preferred for success.

Must-have:

• Hands-on experience designing and testing optical front-end receivers and transmitters (TIAs, drivers), CTLE, DFE, ADC, DAC, oscillators in advanced CMOS processes.
• Power user of Cadence Virtuoso and Spectre, plus experience with Verilog-A and IBIS-AMI or equivalent simulation flows.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; ability to tackle problems without obvious solutions and drive them to completion.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; experience authoring technical specifications.
• Ability and desire to collaborate effectively in cross-disciplinary teams.
• Capacity to comply with U.S. export control requirements.

Preferred:

• Understanding of signal processing (equalization, DSP, coding) and signal integrity for optical communications.
• Experience with silicon photonic devices (Mach–Zehnder, microring modulators, thermally tuned components).
• Self-starter, adaptable, process-oriented, and data-driven mindset.

Education Requirements

PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, or a closely related discipline focused on analog design.

About the Company

Company: Lightmatter

Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Lightmatter develops photonic AI data-center infrastructure and optical chips for extreme-scale AI and HPC. The company invented the Passage 3D‑stacked photonics engine to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects across large-scale processors and raised $400M in Series D financing at a reported $4.4B valuation.