Director, Electro-Optical Validation

PsiQuantum; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

PsiQuantum is seeking a Director of Electro-Optical Validation in Milpitas, CA (remote). This senior role leads validation and failure analysis for high-speed electro-optical hardware, including transceivers.

You will manage a team, shape testing strategies, and communicate with executives and engineers across multiple sites. The ideal candidate has 10+ years in optical validation and 5+ years in leadership, with deep hands-on expertise in VNAs, OSAs, BER testers, and real-time analysis.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Engineering or related field.
• 10+ years of industry experience in validating and testing optical systems.
• 5+ years of people management experience; director level preferred.
• Proven record of leading validation and failure analysis of high-speed electro-optical hardware, such as high-speed optical transceivers.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills for senior leadership and technical audiences.
• Direct experience validating Silicon Photonics assemblies, advanced optical modules, or multi-chip co-packaged systems.
• Expert with high-speed electro-optical devices and test equipment (electro-optical modulator, RF detector, pulsed lasers, real-time oscilloscope).
• Expert with high-speed and optical equipment including VNAs, DCAs, OSAs, and BER testers.
• Expert with debugging RF electronics, electro-optical driving architectures, embedded firmware and real time logic.

Skills

Team leadership

Validation & failure analysis

High-speed electro-optical hardware

Silicon Photonics validation

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in Engineering

Tools

Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs)

Digital/Bit Error Rate Testers (BERTs)

Optical Spectrum Analyzers (OSAs)

RF test equipment

Real-time oscilloscopes

Job description

Director, Electro-Optical Validation at PsiQuantum, Milpitas, California, United States (remote). A director-level full time position in the Engineering team, listed under hardware engineering.

PsiQuantum's mission is to build the first useful quantum computers: machines capable of delivering the breakthroughs the field has long promised. Since our founding in 2016, our singular focus has been to build and deploy million-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum systems. Quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems that even the most advanced supercomputers or AI systems will never reach. Their impact will span energy, pharmaceuticals, finance, agriculture, transportation, materials, and other foundational industries. Our architecture and approach is based on silicon photonics. By leveraging the advanced semiconductor manufacturing industry, including partners like GlobalFoundries, we use the same high-volume processes that already produce billions of chips for telecom and consumer electronics. Photonics offers natural advantages for scale: photons don't feel heat, are immune to electromagnetic interference, and integrate with existing cryogenic cooling and standard fiber-optic infrastructure. That approach has since been tested at the highest level of scrutiny the U.S. government applies to emerging technology, and it has held up. In 2025, PsiQuantum closed a $1 billion funding round that valued the company at $7 billion. In 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed a $100 million Letter of Intent under the CHIPS and Science Act, followed by a $125 million agreement with DARPA under Stage C of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, PsiQuantum's most valuable U.S. government agreement to date. This year, we also broke ground on our utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane, Australia, and continued building out our Chicago site. Victor Peng, our CEO, and co-founder Jeremy O'Brien, now Executive Chairman, lead a team and board that reflects how seriously the world is taking this build, joined this year by Intel's Lip-Bu Tan and Atomico's Niklas Zennström. PsiQuantum also develops the algorithms and software needed to make these systems co

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or above in Engineering or related field with 10+ years of industry experience, relevant to validating and testing optical systems and 5+ years team and people management experience (director level preferred).
• Proven record of leading validation and failure analysis of high-speed electro-optical hardware products, such as high-speed optical transceivers.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with an ability to communicate effectively to a variety of audiences including senior leadership and technical experts. 'Direct experience validating Silicon Photonics assemblies, advanced optical modules, or multi-chip co-packaged systems.
• Expert with high-speed electro-optical devices and test equipment, such as electro-optical modulator, RF detector, pulsed lasers, optical real-time oscilloscope.
• Expert with high-speed and optical equipment including Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs), Digital Communication Analyzers (DCAs), Optical Spectrum Analyzers (OSAs), and Bit Error Rate Testers (BERTs.
• Expert with debugging of RF electronics, electro-optical driving architectures, embedded firmwareand real time logic.
• Zone 1- Bay Area and NYC