Integrated Optics / Optical R&D Engineer

INTEGRATED OPTICS / OPTICAL DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER / LEAD

Attractive SW location, and early-stage company compensation package, including equity.

Engaged Search October 2024

You Must Be in The USA and eligible to work here now to qualify for this role

About our Client:

Our client is an established revenue positive early-stage startup working to disruptively add value in the health information, biomedical optics field. Our client is looking to develop innovative biomedical hardware to provide healthcare information for individuals through innovative optical sensing.Our client strives to provide individuals with better, higher resolution information about their bodies and as a result of their health-care choices. Our client’s team driven environment requires innovative, creative thinkers, problem solvers, and doers, not afraid to deal with ambiguity, and problems requiring breakthrough solutions. Our client values great communicators, highly curious, and independent thinkers, who take initiative and are goal oriented. You should have a personal interest, passion, commitment to your own healthcare, and combining your avocation with your vocation would be self and career actualizing. This R&D role is an on-site role. Our client has developed benchtop demonstration / proof of concept of their sensing technology and now is moving this benchtop to a more refined design which will result in a producible form factor in subsequent development stages.

About the Optical Engineer our client is seeking:

• You are a strong Optical Engineer, both theoretically and practically and are equally adept working in the lab/cleanroom as you are analyzing results, data.You will be responsible for designing, building, testing and validating prototypes of their sensor hardware, especially integrated optical / small form factor optical , photonic, waveguide components and assemblies. You will be working on our client’s 2nd generation, integrated optics version of their sensing technology.
• You will have hands-on experience assembling, building, testing optical / optoelectronic circuits and chip coupling in a cleanroom environment.
• You will provide support and offer leadership in the specification and design of components including: characterization/design validation, subcomponent integration into higher assemblies, and or systems, and eventually the manufacturing / fabrication of the components into assemblies, subsystems, and systems.
• You will design, execute, test, and analyze experiments in the development and optimization of micro-scale optical and integrated optical components in the IR spectrum.
• As the lead Optical Engineer on this next generation R&D project, you will be deeply involved in new product development, validation, testing and advancing existing product technology.
• Experience in semiconductor processing, lithographic processing of integrated optical substrates and circuitry.

Key Technical Qualifications for Success:

• You possess a bachelor’s degree at a minimum, or an advanced degree (preferred) in Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related field and 2-10+ years’ experience in an industry role (preferred) or a postdoctoral role.

Proven experience in assembling, characterizing, and validating integrated optical, waveguide and or micro-scale optical components, with a strong preference for expertise in the Infrared spectrum is desirable.

• You have an affinity, a passion for working in the lab, of experimental optics, engineering, and hands-on work with a variety of different optical instruments, tools, for test, measurement, alignment.
• You enjoy being multidisciplinary, having strong quantitative, analytical skills and being able to work with software tools, Lumerical, Tidy3D, LabVIEW, MATLAB, Zemax, and you might have some electronics knowledge, and or optomechanical abilities especially related to optoelectronic, integrated optics packaging, mounting, alignment.
• You might have experience developing prototypes or products in integrated optics, waveguides, silicon photonics and bringing them through the development cycle, but more important is coming up with creative innovative designs of new technology either in your academic, post doc, or professional work experience.

Key Personal Attributes / Style:

• You are passionate about personal health, and healthcare applications of technologyYou are a “Builder”, who likes to move fast and solve problems.
• You are comfortable working in a small team, wearing many hats, “figuring it out” to advance your own or team technical goals, designs, ideas.
• Predisposition for elegant, simple designs and high-quality standards. Comfortable balancing these deftly against shipping scrappy development work with a Build, Test, Iterate ethos. You recognize that our client is an early-stage company that can take substantial risks but that needs to move fast with high-quality results.
• You see the bigger picture and prioritize to ensure the project doesn’t get bogged down in small details.
• Often you actively propose solutions rather than just identifying problems to keep projects moving, unblocking the team so they can do their best work.
• As an experienced engineer you are skilled at aligning people, assuming best intent, collaborating, and shipping work with velocity.
• As an experienced confident engineer, you are self-directed and independent but an excellent team player.
• You possess a strong internal desire to assume responsibility over projects and accountability for outcomes.
• You are not afraid to operate with conviction without complete clarity. You take decisive actions in difficult, ambiguous situations, and validate assumptions "scrappily" and iteratively.
• You are a diligent communicator, with the ability to convey complex technical information clearly and persuasively. Comfortable writing short memos, consistently documenting and sharing your work, recording voiceover audio/video to express ideas, etc.