Staff / Senior Staff Hardware Test Automation Engineer

Job Title

Staff / Senior Staff Hardware Test Automation Engineer

Role Summary

Join Product Engineering to develop and maintain test software that brings Lightmatter's photonic chips from bench bring-up through production test. The role sits at the hardware/software boundary and supports test on bench setups and automated test equipment (ATE).

You will design test methods and flows, control instruments and wafer probers, build data pipelines for test results, and work closely with hardware, characterization, and manufacturing teams to deliver repeatable test automation.

Experience Level

Senior - typically 8+ years of experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture (semiconductor or photonics preferred).

Responsibilities

Hands-on engineering role combining software development, instrument control, and lab validation.

• Learn test hardware and instruments to make informed automation and software design decisions.
• Design and implement test software to automate device bring-up, characterization, and production sequences across bench and ATE environments.
• Develop and maintain test methods, test flows, and instrument-control code; participate in code reviews and releases.
• Collaborate with hardware and characterization engineers to translate device physics and test requirements into repeatable test programs.
• Build and maintain data logging and results pipelines for downstream metric computation, yield analysis, and production handoff.
• Debug hardware/software integration issues across DUT, fixtures, instruments, and test code to identify root cause.
• Support test program releases to internal test cells and, at senior levels, to external test facilities.
• Communicate progress and blockers daily and spend regular time in the lab working hands-on with hardware.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience for immediate impact; preferred items listed as nice-to-have.

• Must-have: 8+ years experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics.
• Must-have: Proven ownership of test software architecture and decisions about scalability across projects and teams.
• Must-have: Deep hands-on experience with ATE test method/test flow development and instrumentation automation (SCPI/VISA or equivalent).
• Must-have: Experience mentoring engineers and driving cross-functional technical decisions with hardware, characterization, and manufacturing teams.
• Must-have: Demonstrated ability to scope, plan, implement, and validate automation projects end-to-end.
• Must-have: Comfortable working at the hardware/software boundary and able to read and reason about embedded software/firmware (C/C++).
• Must-have: Ability to debug complex hardware/software integration issues across instruments, fixtures, and code.
• Must-have: Capacity to comply with U.S. export control laws.
• Nice-to-have: Experience integrating ATE with wafer-level hardware (probers, handlers).
• Nice-to-have: Experience with photonic test instrumentation.

Education Requirements

Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field. Preferred: Master's or PhD with additional relevant experience. Specific mention of fields: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering were listed; advanced degrees in related technical areas are preferred.

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.