Principal Engineer, Electronic Hardware Design
$180,000 - $250,000 CAD yearly
About the role
The Principal Hardware Design Engineer will take ownership over New Product Introduction (NPI) for External Laser Source (ELS) module hardware design. This is a full-time on-site role in San Jose, CA focused on photonic interconnects for high performance computing.
What you'll do
- Create and maintain External Laser Source module specifications to meet product requirements.
- Manage communication across optical, mechanical, and thermal design teams.
- Design printed circuit board schematics for all functions of External Laser Source NPI.
- Manage internal and external hardware design resources.
- Develop and execute validation test plans for all laser module hardware design components.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering with 12+ years of industry experience, or Master's/PhD with 10+ years of experience.
- Low-noise analog circuit design and electromagnetics fundamentals.
- Knowledge of electro-optic building blocks such as TIA and Laser Driver.
- Experience with Altium PCB design tools, including Altium 365 and Agile workflows.
- Understanding of BMC architecture for enclosure management (OCP).
- Experience with electrical and electro-optic lab equipment, including Oscilloscope, VNA, ESA, OSA, and protocol analyzers.
- Proficiency with circuit simulation tools such as LTspice, PSpice, and vendor-specific switching regulator software.
- Programming skills in Python for test automation and analysis, alongside embedded concepts including real-time operating systems, MCU memory usage, bootloaders, and serial interfaces.
Nice to have
- Optical transceiver design experience (OSFP, QSFP-DD, CDFP).
- Firmware development in C (bare-metal / RTOS).
- Basic RTL development (FPGA, CPLD).
- Basic mechanical CAD tool experience (Solidworks, Fusion).
More semiconductor jobs: Hardware design jobs · San Jose jobs
This role has been open 50 days — slightly above the 46-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1126
|
Median days open
46 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$150k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Ayar Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (1126 roles · 109 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 12 | 1126 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 24 | 6531 · 156 employers |
| Median days open | 51 d | 46 d (+5 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $150k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 88 open roles · median 33 d
- KLA Corporation · 66 open roles · median 59 d
- Applied Materials · 60 open roles · median 40 d
- ASML · 59 open roles · median 17 d
- NVIDIA · 58 open roles · median 74 d
- Teradyne · 58 open roles · median 51 d
How we counted: 1126 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 109 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 — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.