Senior Photonics Design Engineer - Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) / Active Devices
Voyant PhotonicsJob Title
Senior Photonics Design Engineer - Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) / Active Devices
Role Summary
Design, simulate, and deliver active and passive silicon photonic components, with primary focus on Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs) and other active devices. The role owns component development from concept through tapeout and characterization and partners with multidisciplinary teams and foundry partners to produce manufacturable photonic integrated circuit components.
Experience Level
Senior-level. The posting requests a Ph.D. with 2+ years of relevant experience.
Responsibilities
Primary responsibilities include device design, simulation, layout, and driving components through fabrication and test.
- Design, simulate, and optimize active and passive silicon photonic components (SOAs, switches, modulators, photodetectors).
- Develop SOA and active device designs to optimize gain, saturation power, noise, bandwidth, and fabrication tolerance.
- Perform electromagnetic, thermal, and multiphysics simulations to model carrier dynamics, heat dissipation, and nonlinearities.
- Create component layouts and test structures for III-V/Si heterogeneous integration; coordinate thermal management and electrical routing with layout engineers.
- Manage component development through foundry tapeouts, including design reviews and verification with manufacturing partners.
- Analyze optical characterization and wafer-level measurement data to validate designs and guide improvements.
- Collaborate with system-level PIC designers to translate system requirements into component specifications.
- Work with foundry partners to understand process capabilities and develop robust, manufacturable designs.
Requirements
Must-have technical skills and experience required to perform the role; listed separately from education requirements.
- Demonstrated experience in silicon photonic component design, especially active devices and III-V/Si integration.
- Expertise in Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) physics, modeling, and simulation.
- Experience bringing photonic designs through silicon photonics foundry tapeouts and verification.
- Solid understanding of waveguide optics, photonic device physics, and semiconductor fabrication processes.
- Proficiency with photonic simulation tools (examples: Ansys Lumerical, Tidy3D, COMSOL, or equivalent).
- Ability to analyze experimental characterization data and translate results into design improvements.
- Strong problem-solving skills, technical independence, and ability to collaborate across disciplines.
Nice-to-have:
- Experience designing SOAs, gain blocks, lasers, and other hybrid silicon–III/V components.
- Experience with silicon nitride waveguides, multilayer photonic integration, or heterogeneous photonic platforms.
- Experience across wavelength bands (O-band, C-band).
- Proficiency in Python or MATLAB for simulation automation and data analysis.
- Experience with wafer-level characterization, fabrication variation analysis, or statistical device performance modeling.
Education Requirements
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, Photonics, or a closely related field with 2+ years of relevant experience (as stated in the posting).
About the Company
Company: Voyant Photonics
Headquarters: New York, NY, USA
New York City–based company developing compact silicon photonic LiDAR sensors that measure range, velocity, and reflectivity with high accuracy. Uses fingertip-scale silicon photonic chips to produce affordable, high-performance sensors for robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, industrial automation, and other sensing applications.
