Optical Systems Engineer

Job Title

Optical Systems Engineer

Role Summary

Lead the definition and implementation of optical interconnect architecture for Etched's next-generation accelerator systems. Work across hardware teams to prototype, validate, and transition optical subsystems into volume production for high-performance AI servers.

Experience Level

Mid-level. The role requests approximately 5–10 years of relevant experience in optical interconnect, transceiver, or photonic system design.

Responsibilities

Design, validate, and industrialize optical links and subsystems; collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate optics into accelerator products.

• Define optical link architecture and system-level requirements for accelerator cards and multi-rack interconnects.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging interconnect technologies (CPO, NPO, OCI, LPO, XPO) into product roadmap.
• Drive prototypes from definition through validation and transfer to volume manufacturing.
• Partner with Signal Integrity, PCB, ASIC, Thermal, and Mechanical teams on electrical-optical interfaces.
• Specify and qualify optical modules, lasers, PICs, and supplier integrations.
• Bring up and debug optical interfaces using BERTs, sampling scopes, OSAs, and root-cause analysis with foundries and OSATs.
• Define optical bring-up strategies, test equipment, and support high-volume test development.
• Create and maintain optics documentation: AVLs, fiber/cable BOMs, serviceability guidelines, and assembly procedures.

Requirements

Must-have technical experience and skills for immediate contribution; listed nice-to-have items indicate added advantage.

• Must-have: 5–10 years in optical interconnect, transceiver, or photonic system design for high-density compute systems.
• Must-have: Expertise with CPO, NPO, OCI, LPO and familiarity with tradeoffs: energy-per-bit, bandwidth density, reach, latency, and reliability.
• Must-have: Strong fundamentals in link engineering: link-budget, IL/RL, OSNR, eye diagrams, jitter, BER, and FEC margining.
• Must-have: Experience bringing up optical links and PIC-based subsystems alongside silicon and debugging with PIC foundries and ELS vendors.
• Must-have: Working knowledge of lasers, modulators, TIAs, DSPs/retimers and high-speed host interfaces (100G/200G-per-lane PAM4) and pluggable solutions (OSFP, QSFP-DD).
• Must-have: Familiarity with photonic-electronic co-design, advanced packaging, fiber-attach methods, optical interposers, and 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration.
• Must-have: Understanding of datacenter infrastructure, particularly high-power (>10 kW) liquid-cooled AI servers and cluster-scale optical fabrics.
• Nice-to-have: Conversant in relevant standards and MSAs (OCI, Open CPX, OIF, UCIe) and prior supplier qualification experience.
• Nice-to-have: Passion for modern AI systems and willingness to learn AI workload implications on hardware.

Education Requirements

Not specified.

About the Company

Company: Etched

Headquarters: San Jose, CA, United States

Etched develops purpose-built AI inference ASICs and systems optimized for transformer models, aiming to deliver significantly higher performance, lower cost, and lower latency than GPUs. The company focuses on enabling applications like real-time video generation and advanced reasoning agents, and is backed by leading investors and engineers.