Principal Engineer, Silicon Photonics

Job Title

Principal Engineer, Silicon Photonics

Role Summary

Lead technical product definition and execution for packaged silicon photonics and optical interconnect products. Own requirements, drive cross-functional alignment, and coordinate with customers, foundries, contract manufacturers, and suppliers from concept through validation and scale-up.

Lumilens builds photonics infrastructure for high-performance AI computing; this role contributes directly to product strategy, manufacturability, and system integration.

Experience Level

Senior / Principal-level. The posting requests a principal-level technical leader; specific years-of-experience were not specified.

Responsibilities

Own product requirements and lead technical execution across disciplines for packaged silicon photonics solutions.

• Define and own product requirements balancing performance, manufacturability, cost, power, and time-to-market.
• Act as the primary technical interface to customers, foundries, and suppliers to ensure requirements match real-world use cases.
• Align internal teams and external partners on priorities, trade-offs, milestones, and deliverables for packaged optics.
• Perform link analysis and use simulation/modeling to assess impairments (noise, distortion) and optimize system performance.
• Translate system-level goals into actionable requirements for photonics, electronics, firmware, software, validation, and manufacturing.
• Lead packaging and assembly execution: fiber attach, thermal constraints, assembly tolerances, test strategy, reliability, and scale-up readiness.
• Define and execute test strategies (EVT, DVT, SVT), select equipment, and perform hands-on lab validation.

Requirements

Must-have qualifications are listed first; preferred skills follow.

• Must-have: Principal-level technical leadership experience delivering photonics-based products.
• Deep expertise in silicon photonics design, performance trade-offs, and packaged optics integration.
• Direct experience with packaged silicon photonics or optical engine development, including manufacturing considerations.
• Proven ability to perform optical link budget analysis using simulation and modeling.
• Experience defining product requirements and driving execution across hardware, firmware, software, validation, and manufacturing teams.
• Experience defining test plans and methodologies for optical systems (EVT, DVT, SVT).
• Hands-on lab skills and ability to execute experiments and validation activities.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced startup environment and drive cross-functional decisions.
• Nice-to-have: Experience with test automation and scripting (e.g., Python); work with hyperscale data center customers or suppliers; experience with fiber attach technologies and optical assembly processes.

Education Requirements

Not specified.

About the Company

Company: Lumilens

Headquarters: San Jose, CA, USA

Lumilens develops integrated photonics and optical interconnect solutions for high-speed data communication and chip-to-chip interfaces, focusing on optical front-end hardware and co-packaged optics for advanced semiconductor systems.