Staff Systems Engineer, Calibration, Bring-Up & Verification

Job Title

Staff Systems Engineer, Calibration, Bring-Up & Verification

Role Summary

Ownership of calibration architecture, system integration, and verification for an optical vector-matrix multiplication (OVMM) engine. The role spans algorithm design, defining hardware/software interfaces, and hands-on laboratory bring-up and characterization to ensure system accuracy targets are met.

Report to the Chief Systems Engineer and lead cross-functional bring-up and verification activities between photonics, analog/digital IC, and system teams.

Experience Level

Senior - 5+ years in calibration algorithm development, system bring-up, or verification of complex electro-optic or mixed-signal systems.

Responsibilities

Lead calibration, bring-up, and verification activities from algorithm design through lab demonstration and system acceptance.

• Define the calibration architecture and scope algorithms to correct optical phase, amplitude, and timing across many channels.
• Design, implement, and optimize calibration algorithms using control theory and optimization to meet accuracy and time targets.
• Specify calibration controller behavior, apply paths, and digital hardware structures; define software/firmware interfaces.
• Plan and lead system integration, laboratory bring-up, debugging, and establish acceptance criteria for subassemblies.
• Define system-level test, diagnostics, and observability requirements for bring-up, calibration, and field operation.
• Develop and execute verification plans; characterize performance in the lab and correlate measurements with models.
• Develop calibration, control, and test software (primarily Python) used in lab bring-up and production flows.
• Mentor engineers on calibration algorithm design, lab bring-up practices, and characterization methodology.

Requirements

Key must-have skills and domain experience; preferred skills are listed separately.

Must-have:

• 5+ years developing calibration algorithms, system bring-up, or verification for electro-optic or mixed-signal systems.
• Strong foundation in feedback control (stability analysis, sampled-data systems) and optimization methods (convex optimization, gradient methods).
• Hands-on experience bringing up and debugging hardware using oscilloscopes, spectrum/network analyzers, and optical test equipment.
• Proficiency building calibration and test software in Python and/or MATLAB for control loops, data acquisition, and automated characterization.
• Ability to correlate measured performance with models and root-cause discrepancies.
• Strong communication skills for cross-functional collaboration with analog IC, digital, photonic device, and system architecture teams.

Nice-to-have:

• Practical DSP experience: spectral analysis, correlation, and adaptive filtering within calibration/measurement loops.
• Experience specifying digital hardware for calibration (register maps, state machines, fixed-point arithmetic).
• Familiarity with Cadence Virtuoso and Spectre for validating behavioral models against circuit-level simulation.
• Exposure to Bayesian optimization, ML for system calibration, or statistical design of experiments.
• Experience with optical transceiver calibration, phased-array beamforming, or ADC/DAC calibration.

Education Requirements

MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a closely related field with emphasis on control systems, signal processing, or mixed-signal systems.

About the Company

Company: Neurophos

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, United States

Startup developing silicon-photonic AI accelerator chips that use programmable metasurfaces and dense optical cells to perform matrix multiplications at the speed of light, targeting large-scale AI inference with much higher energy efficiency and performance than traditional electronic approaches.