Staff / Sr. Staff Hardware Test Automation Engineer
LightmatterJob Title
Staff / Sr. Staff Hardware Test Automation Engineer
Role Summary
Build and maintain test automation for bench and ATE environments to bring up, characterize, and qualify Lightmatter's photonic devices and chips. The role sits on Product Engineering and bridges hands-on lab work with test software, instrumentation, and production test flow development.
Work across instrument control, wafer prober integration, embedded interfaces, and data pipelines to deliver repeatable test programs and quality results.
Experience Level
Senior level - requires significant experience; posting specifies 8+ years in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture.
Responsibilities
Primary responsibilities include designing, implementing, and maintaining test software and infrastructure across bench and production test environments.
- Learn hardware and test fixtures to make informed software and automation decisions.
- Design and build automated test sequences for device bring-up, characterization, and production test on bench and ATE systems.
- Develop and maintain test methods, test flows, and instrument-control code; participate in code reviews and architecture decisions.
- Collaborate with hardware and characterization engineers to translate device physics and test requirements into repeatable software tests.
- Implement and maintain data logging and results pipelines for downstream metric computation, yield analysis, and production handoff.
- Debug hardware/software integration issues across device, fixture, 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 regularly and spend hands-on time in the lab with hardware.
Requirements
Key technical and professional requirements. Education details are summarized separately under Education Requirements.
- 8+ years experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics industries.
- Proven ownership of test software architecture and decisions that allow frameworks to scale across projects and teams.
- Deep, hands-on experience developing ATE test methods and test flows, or embedded test frameworks for hardware automation.
- Fluency with instrumentation automation (SCPI/VISA or equivalent) and ability to teach others these techniques.
- History of mentoring engineers and driving cross-functional technical decisions with hardware, characterization, and manufacturing teams.
- Ability to scope, plan, implement, and validate end-to-end automation projects and communicate tradeoffs.
- Comfort working at the hardware/software boundary and reading or co-developing embedded software/firmware (C/C++/controls).
- Experience building data collection and results pipelines from lab equipment to structured results.
- Willingness and ability to work hands-on in the lab regularly.
- Ability to comply with U.S. export control laws as required for the role.
Education Requirements
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field is required. Master's or PhD in a related field is preferred (posting notes Master's/PhD plus ~3+ years as a preferred profile). The posting emphasizes domain experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, semiconductor or photonics rather than specific certifications. No explicit "or equivalent experience" clause was provided in the posting.
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.
