Customer Engineering Leader

CScale; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

CScale is building the interconnect for gigawatt-scale AI. You’ll own the technical customer path from defining the application requirements to proven solution, partnering with product management, engineering, and sales, spanning applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering.

You will build a team to scale this function over time, interfacing with customers and vendors, and ensuring hardware bring-up, validation, and robust documentation across data sheets and

Qualifications

• Minimum 15+ years of relevant experience in EE/Optics.
• BS/MS/PhD in EE, Optics, Physics or related field.
• Experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Define customer requirements and architect end-to-end optical interconnect solutions.
• Lead applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering teams.
• Validate hardware in customer labs and ensure qualification plans.

Skills

Optical interconnect expertise

Systems thinking

Hardware bring-up and test

Customer engagement

Leadership of multi-disciplinary teams

Technical documentation

Education

BS/MS/PhD in EE, Optics, Physics

Tools

High-speed testing equipment

SI/PI analysis

Module qualification processes

Job description

CScale is building the interconnect for gigawatt-scale AI. As AI scale-up moves toward deployments spanning thousands of accelerators and dozens of racks, the network needs to deliver high bandwidth, predictable low latency, and continuous communication. CScale is building integrated optical interconnect designed for this new scale, enabling accelerators to work together like a single, much larger computer. But at this scale, performance is only part of the challenge. Optical failures are inevitable, and the system needs to keep running. CScale is designing the interconnect for continuity.Lasers will fail. Compute shouldn’t.The ambition is simple:Build AI interconnect you can take for granted.CScale came out of stealth in September 2026 with $145 million in Series C funding, bringing total funding to $188 million.

About the role

You’ll own the technical customer path from defining the application requirements need to proven solution. That means capturing what customers require, defining the solutions that meet those requirements, and proving the hardware works in customer labs and in front of the industry. The role partners closely with product management, engineering, and sales - and spans three functions: applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering. You will build a team to scale this function over time.

What you’ll own

Applications engineering. You’ll be the primary technical interface to customers and partners, both before and after the sale. You’ll lead requirements capture, architecture and interoperability discussions, and technical objection handling. You’ll support evaluation platforms through bring-up and debug in customer labs, and run failure analysis on field and customer-observed issues. You’ll feed requirements back into product definition and own all customer-facing technical documentation, including data sheets, app notes, and installation guides.

Solutions architecture. You’ll define the complete optical interconnect solution across their electrical, optical, mechanical, thermal, and management interfaces. You’ll write the hardware requirements issued to module makers, review partner designs against them (host signal integrity, power delivery, and thermal), and drive issues to closure before build. You’ll own first hardware bring-up and solution validation, confirming the integrated system meets customer requirements in real operating conditions. You’ll also own the qualification plan and serve as the signing authority on module qualification.

Demo engineering. You’ll turn demo requirements into platform, fixturing, and instrumentation, and you’ll define what each demo measures and what it can legitimately claim. You’ll own demo bring-up, verify the results are real before any customer sees them, and run or support demos at customer sites and conferences.

Ideal candidate

• Deep background in high-speed optical interconnect, such as pluggable or co-packaged optics, silicon photonics, or optical engines
• Systems thinking across optical, electrical, thermal, and power domains, with the ability to write clear, testable hardware requirements
• Credibility at the bench: hardware bring-up, SI/PI, validation, debug, and root-cause failure analysis
• Able to engage directly with customer system architects, defend technical positions, and write clearly
• The judgment and backbone to sign off on qualification, or to withhold sign-off
• Experience leading engineers across multiple disciplines
• 15+ years of relevant experience; BS/MS/PhD in EE, Optics, Physics, or similar