Senior Laser Designer - California, Santa Clara, United States
$164,470 - $311,890 USD yearly
Originally posted 7 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role involves developing advanced photonics components and integrating them into Silicon Photonic circuits for optical communication solutions. You will be designing, simulating, and optimizing DFB lasers, advancing methodologies for performance validation and reliability testing.
What you'll do
- Design, simulate, and optimize DFB lasers for high-speed optical communication applications.
- Perform tolerance analysis to enhance device performance, power efficiency, and reliability.
- Lead test chip execution, including design layout, tapeout, validation, and data analysis.
- Develop and refine photonic modeling methodologies and propose new testing approaches.
- Analyze test data from component characterizations to identify performance gaps and implement improvement strategies.
- Collaborate with interdisciplinary engineering teams to ensure seamless integration of photonics components into system-level designs.
What you'll need
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related discipline with 6+ years of relevant experience OR Ph.D. with 4+ years of industry expertise.
- Extensive experience in designing and simulating DFB lasers including InP epi design.
- Industrial experience developing DFB lasers in high volume manufacturing, including taking designs through product qualification.
Nice to have
- Project leadership experience.
- Expertise in analyzing photonic component or integrated circuit (PIC) test data using statistical tools such as JMP or data libraries in MATLAB/Python.
- Matlab programing experience.
- Familiarity with industry-standard layout tools like Cadence and KLayout for component design and test chip execution.
- System-level modeling expertise for optimizing optical link performance and scalability.
- Published research in peer-reviewed journals focused on photonics technologies.
Skills: DFB lasers, photonics components, Silicon Photonic circuits, optical communication, InP epi design
This role has been open 59 days — below the 67-day median for Optical/Photonics IC Design roles.
Optical/Photonics IC Design · Photonics
|
Open roles in category
133
|
Median days open
67 d
|
Median salary
$195k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Intel Corporation | All employers we track in this specialty (133 roles · 33 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 6 | 133 |
| Median days open | 48 d | 67 d (−19 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $195k |
Skills observed across this category: DFB lasers, photonics components, Silicon Photonic circuits, optical communication, InP epi design
Who's hiring in this category
- Lightmatter · 18 open roles · median 81 d
- GlobalFoundries · 16 open roles · median 67 d
- Coherent Corp · 15 open roles · median 75 d
- Lumentum · 9 open roles · median 62 d
- Keysight Technologies · 7 open roles · median 31 d
- Marvell Technology · 7 open roles · median 151 d
How we counted: 133 open Optical/Photonics IC Design (Photonics) roles from 33 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 5 Oct 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.