Silicon, Hardware, & Photonics Engineering - Internship
LightmatterJob Title
Silicon, Hardware, & Photonics Engineering - Internship
Role Summary
This internship supports Lightmatter's engineering teams that develop silicon photonics, 3D-stacked photonics engines, and system integration from chip to rack-scale deployment. Interns will contribute to design, validation, testing, and integration work across photonics, analog, digital, firmware, physical design, and systems.
Location: Boston, MA or Mountain View, CA (flexible hybrid workplace). Compensation range: $40–$67 USD per hour.
Experience Level
Entry-level (Internship). Intended for students or recent graduates.
Responsibilities
Depending on background, interns will support one or more of the following engineering areas:
- Photonics & Silicon Engineering: design and simulation of optical components and photonic interconnects.
- Product Engineering: develop and run validation tests from lab bench to manufacturable hardware.
- Analog: assist with design and verification of analog/mixed-signal circuits that drive photonic components.
- Laser Development: characterize and integrate laser sources used in the photonic fabric.
- Systems Engineering: board bring-up, lab validation, and system integration of photonic platforms.
- Digital Design: RTL development, modeling of photonics circuitry, and control logic for photonic SoCs.
- Design Verification: build testbenches and run simulations to verify chip designs.
- Physical Design: synthesis, timing analysis, floorplanning, place-and-route, or physical verification using industry EDA tools.
- Firmware Engineering: develop low-level drivers, laser control algorithms, and system telemetry.
Requirements
Must-have skills and attributes for successful interns.
- Hands-on experience from coursework, capstone projects, research labs, or previous internships.
- Familiarity with at least one relevant tool such as SolidWorks, ANSYS, ADS, or Cadence.
- Practical lab or bench skills for testing and validation tasks (as applicable to the assigned area).
- Curious, collaborative, and comfortable asking questions and working on multidisciplinary teams.
- Ability to comply with U.S. export control laws.
Education Requirements
Pursuing or recently completed a BS, MS, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
About the Company
Company: Lightmatter
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Lightmatter develops photonic AI data-center infrastructure and optical chips for extreme-scale AI and HPC. The company invented the Passage 3D‑stacked photonics engine to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects across large-scale processors and raised $400M in Series D financing at a reported $4.4B valuation.
