Senior Platform & Hardware Applications Engineer

Job Title

Senior Platform & Hardware Applications Engineer

Role Summary

Deliver technical field and integration engineering to enable customer adoption of Black Semiconductor's Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) technology. Work across product, photonics, packaging, test engineering, and commercial teams to validate platforms, support bring-up, and feed field feedback into product development.

Experience Level

Senior-level role. The posting specifies a senior position but does not list explicit years of experience.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities focused on customer integration, system validation, and cross-team feedback.

• Guide customers in integrating OCI products into switches, NICs, accelerators, ASICs, and FPGA platforms.
• Lead customer bring-up, link training, BER validation, interoperability testing, and system-level debugging.
• Develop reference designs, example schematics, integration guides, application notes, and reference boards covering power, clocking, cabling, management interfaces, and mechanical/thermal guidelines.
• Support pre-sales evaluations, demonstrations, benchmarking, and post-sales technical escalations and on-site lab support for key accounts.
• Perform high-speed system validation and lab measurements; automate experiments and analyze test data.
• Coordinate with Product, Photonics, Packaging, and Test teams to communicate field issues and feature requests.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and platform experience; listed concisely.

• Proven experience with FPGA and ASIC SerDes bring-up, including evaluation/demo board PCB design, RTL integration, IP bring-up, and interposer validation.
• Strong hands-on experience with high-speed measurements and lab debug tools: oscilloscopes, pattern generators, logic analyzers, and related equipment.
• Practical knowledge of optical interconnect concepts (transceivers, link budgets, NRZ/PAM4, equalization) and interoperability testing.
• Programming and scripting skills for PC-based control, test automation, equipment interfacing, and data analysis.
• Experience with FPGA development tool flows and embedded software used during bring-up.
• Familiarity with PCB CAD tools for schematic capture/layout and standard engineering documentation practices.
• Strong customer-facing communication skills; able to explain signal integrity/optical concepts and produce clear technical documentation.
• Ability to travel for customer support and on-site integration work as required.

Nice-to-have: prior experience with Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), optical chiplets, familiarity with standards such as Ethernet/PCIe/CXL/JESD204, and prior field engineering or pre-sales demonstration experience.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field, or equivalent industry experience.

About the Company

Company: Black Semiconductor

Headquarters: Aachen, Germany

Black Semiconductor is revolutionizing the semiconductor industry with innovative graphene solutions that enhance chip connectivity and efficiency. By merging electronic computing and photonic communication, the company aims to reshape how chips interact, driving significant advancements in power and speed. Their human-centered approach fosters collaboration and continuous learning, making it a dynamic place for professionals to grow and make an impact.