Senior Platform & Hardware Applications Engineer

Job Title

Senior Platform & Hardware Applications Engineer

Role Summary

Senior engineer responsible for enabling customer adoption of Black Semiconductor's Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) technology. The role spans platform integration, high-speed system validation, reference design development, and customer-facing technical support across the product lifecycle.

Works closely with Product, Photonics, Packaging, Test Engineering, and Commercial teams to deploy solutions, resolve field issues, and feed customer insights back into product development.

Experience Level

Senior-level. The posting title specifies "Senior"; explicit years of experience are not provided.

Responsibilities

Deliver technical enablement, validation, and support for customers integrating OCI into system platforms.

• Guide customer integration into switches, NICs, accelerators, ASICs, and FPGA platforms.
• Support customer bring-up and debug: link training, BER validation, interoperability testing, firmware configuration, and system-level issue resolution.
• Develop reference designs, example schematics, reference boards, application notes, integration guides, and contribute to SDKs/PDKs where appropriate.
• Perform platform integration and high-speed system validation, including interoperability and interposer validation.
• Coordinate with Product, Photonics, Packaging, and Test teams to communicate field issues and feature requests.
• Support pre-sales evaluations, demonstrations, benchmarking, and post-sales technical escalations, training, and on-site lab support for key accounts.

Requirements

Key technical skills and abilities required to perform the role.

• Must-have: Strong experience with FPGA and ASIC SerDes bring-up, including evaluation/demo board PCB design, RTL development, IP integration, embedded software, tool flows, and high-speed measurements.
• Must-have: Practical experience with high-speed debug tools and lab equipment (oscilloscopes, pattern generators, logic analyzers, voltmeters).
• Must-have: Good understanding of optical interconnect concepts: optical transceivers, Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), optical chiplets, link budgets, NRZ/PAM4, equalization, and high-speed standards (Ethernet, PCIe, CXL, JESD204).
• Must-have: Programming and scripting skills for PC-based control, automation, test equipment interfacing, and data analysis.
• Must-have: Strong customer-facing communication skills and ability to coordinate multi-stakeholder debugging and write technical documentation.
• Familiarity with FPGA development tool flows, PCB CAD tools for schematic capture and layout, and engineering documentation/drawing tools.
• Nice-to-have: Experience with photonics, packaging, test engineering, SDK/PDK contribution, or on-site laboratory support for major accounts.

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.