Sr. Engineer, Photonics Device Design
$180,000 - $220,000 USD yearly
About the role
As a photonics design engineer at Ayar Labs, you will design, simulate, and characterize integrated photonic components for an optical I/O product roadmap. You will contribute to tape-outs, build compact models from measurement data, and develop design and analysis tools for co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions.
What you'll do
- Design integrated photonic components for optical I/O, including passive devices such as couplers, gratings, and micro-ring resonators.
- Plan test vehicles, use measurement data to refine simulation models, and drive device performance toward roadmap targets.
- Contribute to the team's design and analysis codebase by extending simulation automation, layout scripts, and data analysis tools.
- Collaborate with packaging, laser, circuits, and firmware teams to translate system requirements into device specifications.
- Work with foundry process data to evaluate design margins, implement design-for-manufacturability, and support yield improvement.
What you'll need
- B.S. or equivalent experience in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related field.
- 2+ years of experience in silicon photonics or integrated photonic device design across research or commercial environments.
- Solid understanding of photonic device physics, including waveguides, couplers, gratings, and micro-ring resonators.
- Experience with simulation tools for passive optical devices, such as FDTD and mode solvers.
- Python skills with experience writing structured code in a team environment.
- Ability to connect simulation to measurement by designing, characterizing, and iterating on device performance.
Nice to have
- M.S. or PhD with an integrated photonics focus.
- Experience contributing to PIC tape-outs on a standard silicon photonics platform (e.g., AIM Photonics, GlobalFoundries, imec, or similar).
- Experience designing or characterizing electro-optic devices such as micro-ring modulators and photodetectors.
- High-speed test experience, including BERT, VNA, and wafer-level characterization.
- Statistical analysis of device or process data and DOE methods.
- Familiarity with optical transceiver principles and co-packaged optics architectures.
- Demonstrated use of AI tools to achieve productivity gains in design or analysis workflows (e.g., device optimization, AI-assisted code development).
Skills: electro-optic systems, photonic devices, couplers, micro-ring resonators, FDTD, PIC designs
More semiconductor jobs: Photonics jobs · San Jose jobs
This role has been open 155 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 | Ayar Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (161 roles · 35 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 11 | 161 |
| Median days open | 1 d | 71 d (−70 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $194k |
Skills observed across this category: electro-optic systems, photonic devices, couplers, micro-ring resonators, FDTD, PIC designs
Who's hiring in this category
- Coherent Corp · 17 open roles · median 109 d
- GlobalFoundries · 13 open roles · median 80 d
- Ayar Labs (this employer) · 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.