Sr. Staff Product Manager (Photonics)

Job Title

Senior Staff Product Manager (Photonics)

Role Summary

Lead product definition, rollout, and commercialization for photonics-enabled products, with a primary focus on the Passage interconnect platform, evaluation systems, and demonstration vehicles. Work cross-functionally with engineering, sales, operations, finance, and executives to secure design wins with top semiconductor and cloud customers and accelerate adoption into volume production.

This is a technical, client-facing product role requiring detailed market and engineering knowledge of silicon photonics and datacenter optical systems.

Experience Level

Senior - requires substantial experience (10+ years related experience with at least 6 years in product management, marketing, applications engineering, or business development focused on high-complexity semiconductor products).

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include product strategy, go-to-market execution, and lifecycle management.

• Define product requirements (MRD/PRD), SKU strategy, and commercial positioning for silicon photonics products.
• Develop and manage strategic industry partnerships for optical hardware (lasers, fibers, connectors, components).
• Manage product rollouts and full lifecycle from early development through volume production and EOL.
• Partner with sales to win key accounts by creating customer proposals, technical collateral, and ROI/value frameworks.
• Establish pricing guidelines, margin models, and revenue forecasts to ensure competitive positioning and profitability.
• Collaborate with engineering and technical teams to produce high-value outbound collateral and technical documentation.

Requirements

Key qualifications and skills required to perform successfully in this role.

• Must-have: Detailed market and technical knowledge of silicon photonics and related optical technologies.
• Must-have: Proven track record driving products from business definition through design-in and volume production for semiconductor or optical hardware.
• Must-have: Deep experience with datacenter-deployed technology, including management, provisioning, operation, and maintenance of optical components.
• Must-have: Comprehensive end-to-end knowledge of semiconductor chip design and manufacturing processes.
• Must-have: Strong analytical skills for gathering and interpreting complex datasets to inform product and business strategy.
• Must-have: Collaborative leadership and strong communication skills for aligning multidisciplinary teams and accelerating delivery schedules.
• Must-have: Ability to comply with U.S. export control laws and related federal requirements.
• Nice-to-have: Established professional network across datacenter, semiconductor, and optical industry segments.
• Nice-to-have: Proven experience creating high-impact customer proposals and ROI/value proposition materials.
• Nice-to-have: Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments and managing competing priorities.

Education Requirements

Required: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related engineering field. Preferred: PhD focused on Optics, Photonics, or related advanced photonic technology.

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.