Photonics AI Engineer - Fabrication-Aware Design

Job Description

Job Title: Photonics AI Engineer, Fabrication-Aware Design. Location: Santa Clara, California, USA

Responsibilities:

• Bridge fabrication and design teams by translating process constraints into design requirements and communicating design requirements to process engineering teams.
• Own the fabrication-aware design methodology, including layer stacks, geometry translation, bias and critical dimension (CD) targets, corner definitions, and design rules based on measured process capabilities.
• Calibrate process models against real wafer data, accounting for critical dimension and edge bias, sidewall angle, etch depth, film non-uniformity, and lithographic rounding.
• Define tolerance and yield budgets and evaluate design robustness against fabrication process variations;
• Contribute design requirements and test structures to fabrication experiments and design of experiments (DOEs).
• Convert inline metrology, wafer-level optical testing, imaging analysis, and yield data into actionable design improvements.
• Build AI-powered tools to automate data analysis and connect fabrication measurements with design optimization.
• Lead failure analysis to distinguish design-related errors from fabrication process excursions.
• Use AI tooling extensively to automate workflows and improve fabrication-aware design processes.
• Collaborate with fabrication process engineers and ML/AI specialists to develop data-driven models for process and measurement data.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Physics, Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of integrated photonics fabrication and its effects on optical performance.
• Hands-on experience driving process-design co-optimization with fabrication teams;
• Participation in multiple tapeouts, with responsibility for fabrication-aware design decisions, DOE input, or post-silicon analysis.
• Strong Python programming skills applied to real-world data pipelines.
• Proficiency with modern AI tools, including coding agents, LLM-driven automation, or agentic pipelines, with a track record of building custom tools.
• Working knowledge of semiconductor and photonics metrology and failure analysis, including at least two of the following:
  • Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
  • Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
  • Atomic force microscopy (AFM)
  • Ellipsometry
  • X-ray reflectometry or diffraction (XRR/XRD)
  • Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS)
  • Raman spectroscopy
  • Photoluminescence
• Experience performing statistical analysis of wafer-level data and yield.
• Ability to collaborate with ML/AI specialists on data-driven process and measurement models.
• Excellent communication skills across design and process engineering teams;
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment with multiple competing priorities.
• Willingness to adopt emerging AI capabilities quickly and adapt workflows accordingly.

Preferred:

• Master's degree or PhD in Physics, Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience building agentic systems or AI tools for specialized technical applications.
• Experience with integrated photonics fabrication using electro-optic materials, such as thin-film lithium niobate.
• Demonstrated success in achieving low optical loss in integrated photonic components;
• Experience applying machine learning, AI, or computer vision to microscopy, metrology, or inspection data.
• Hands-on component design experience, including device simulation and layout.
• Experience working with external foundry partners on process qualification and technology transfer.
• Familiarity with quantum photonics or quantum computing hardware.

Technical Tools and Technologies:

• Python and its scientific computing ecosystem
• AI coding agents, large language models, and agentic AI pipelines
• GitHub
• Docker
• Cloud computing resources
• Machine learning and data-driven process modeling
• Semiconductor and photonics metrology tools

Benefits and Compensation:

• Annual base salary ranging from $160,000 to $210,000 USD.
• Equity eligibility.
• Employee benefits.
• Base salary determined by work location, experience, and internal compensation benchmarks.