About the role
As a Photonics IC Technical Lead, you will lead the design and development of silicon photonics devices, sub-systems, and PICs from wafer level to module level. The position spans design, tapeout, packaging, and laboratory testing for passive and active components.
What you'll do
- Lead the design of manufacturable passive and active silicon photonics components.
- Create and optimize photonics layouts and contribute to tapeouts.
- Perform simulations and modeling to ensure first-pass design success.
- Develop and implement test plans, procedures, and methodologies for wafer-level, chip-level, eval board-level, and sub-module-level testing.
- Troubleshoot test setups and perform test measurements and data analysis to characterize device performance.
- Support the transition of designs from R&D into high-volume manufacturing while participating in design reviews.
What you'll need
- Master's or Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field.
- Demonstrated experience in photonic device design, optimization, layout, and integrated photonics.
- Proficiency in photonic simulation tools such as Lumerical, Tidy3D, or COMSOL.
- Experience in photonics wafer-level and chip-level testing.
- Experience developing software in Python, C, C++, or MATLAB.
- Experience building and debugging optical systems involving lasers.
Nice to have
- Understanding of coherent communication, signal integration, integrated optics, and semiconductor physics.
- Experience with lasers, free-space and fiber optics, signal processing, data science, electronic IC design, opto-electronic packaging, and electrical engineering.
Skills: Photonics IC Engineer, perception systems, custom silicon
More semiconductor jobs: Photonics jobs · Sunnyvale jobs
This role has been open 135 days — well above the 71-day median for Optical/Photonics IC Design roles.
Optical/Photonics IC Design · Photonics
|
Open roles in category
161
|
Median days open
71 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$194k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Lyte AI | All employers we track in this specialty (161 roles · 35 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 4 | 161 |
| Median days open | 81 d | 71 d (+10 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $194k |
Skills observed across this category: Photonics IC Engineer, perception systems, custom silicon
Who's hiring in this category
- Coherent Corp · 17 open roles · median 109 d
- GlobalFoundries · 13 open roles · median 80 d
- Ayar Labs · 11 open roles · median 1 d
- Lightmatter · 11 open roles · median 116 d
- Lumentum · 10 open roles · median 96 d
- Marvell Technology · 10 open roles · median 51 d
How we counted: 161 open Optical/Photonics IC Design (Photonics) roles from 35 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 8 Nov 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there. Figures refresh nightly.