Senior/Staff Electro-Optic Hardware Design Engineer - Milpitas, California, United States

Originally posted 29 September 2026 by the employer.

This role focuses on silicon photonics for quantum computing systems.

About the role

This role involves owning the detailed design, integration, and qualification of electro-optic hardware modules for advanced photonic systems. The work focuses on silicon photonics for quantum computing.

What you'll do

• Own detailed electro-optic module design from requirements through prototype build, EVT, DVT, and transfer to manufacturing.
• Convert system architecture into complete optical, electrical, mechanical, thermal, firmware-control, and test interfaces for rack-mountable boxes and blade assemblies.
• Lead design trade studies across optical performance, noise, stability, dynamic range, thermal behavior, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.
• Plan and execute module bring-up, characterization, margin testing, environmental testing, and reliability-oriented testing.
• Author verification and acceptance requirements, test plans, procedures, and reports for engineering builds and externally supplied modules.
• Oversee internal design reviews and configuration control, ensuring documentation and interfaces are production-ready.

What you'll need

• B.S. or higher in electrical engineering, optical engineering, physics, mechanical engineering, or a related field.
• Demonstrated ownership of detailed electro-optic or opto-mechanical hardware design through prototype, verification, qualification, and manufacturing release.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of fiber-optic components and subsystems, including amplifiers, attenuators, polarization control, optical power monitoring, and photodetection.
• Experience integrating optical, analog and digital electronics, thermal management, mechanical packaging, and safety features in rack-mountable or blade-format equipment.
• Proficiency developing requirements, interface-control documentation, optical and electrical budgets, verification matrices, test plans, procedures, acceptance criteria, and formal test reports.
• Strong experimental judgment, including test design, instrumentation, measurement uncertainty, data analysis, and the ability to distinguish component limitations from integration or test artifacts.
• Experience leading EVT/DVT, hardware bring-up, structured debugging, failure analysis, root-cause investigation, and corrective-action closure.

Nice to have

• Experience with high-power or low-noise optical amplification, photonic calibration, metrology, quantum photonics, or precision instrumentation.
• Familiarity with laser and electrical safety, EMI/EMC, thermal and environmental qualification, reliability methods, and applicable product-compliance practices.
• Experience creating automated laboratory or production test systems using Python, LabVIEW, MATLAB.
• Working knowledge of statistical tolerance analysis, measurement-system analysis, design of experiments, reliability growth, and supplier quality methods.
• Experience transferring low-volume, high-complexity hardware into repeatable production and supporting sustaining engineering or field failure analysis.