Senior Photonic IC Design Engineer – Tapeout & Testing

Acceler8 Talent; Washington, Baltimore (District of Columbia, MD); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Acceler8Talent partners with a photonics startup in the Washington, D.C. area seeking a Senior/Staff Integrated Photonics Engineer. You will design, simulate, layout, and tape out PICs, and drive device development from concept through fabrication and testing.

You will collaborate with foundries, perform hands-on characterization, analyze data, and help advance photonic products across communications, sensing, defense, and quantum applications.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Photonics, Optics, or related STEM field.
• 3–10 years of experience designing and developing photonic integrated circuits.
• Experience owning PIC designs through layout, tapeout, fabrication, and characterization.
• Hands-on experience with photonic device testing, measurement, and data analysis.
• Experience with photonic simulation tools such as Lumerical, FDTD, MODE, CHARGE, Interconnect, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Design, simulate, layout, and tape out photonic integrated circuits and subsystems.
• Develop and optimize active and passive photonic devices for next-generation optical systems.
• Perform hands-on characterization and testing of fabricated photonic devices and circuits.
• Analyze measurement data and use results to drive future design iterations and performance improvements.
• Collaborate with foundry partners, packaging vendors, and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver working hardware.
• Develop scalable workflows for PIC design, simulation, characterization, and automation.
• Lead technical efforts, contribute to product development roadmaps, and support ongoing R&D initiatives.

Skills

PIC design

Device testing

Data analysis

Communication

Independent work

Education

MS or PhD in relevant field

Tools

Lumerical

FDTD

MODE

CHARGE

Interconnect

KLayout

GDSFactory

Cadence Virtuoso

Python

MATLAB

Job description

Acceler8Talent partners with a photonics startup in the Washington, D.C. area seeking a Senior/Staff Integrated Photonics Engineer. You will design, simulate, layout, and tape out PICs, and drive device development from concept through fabrication and testing.

You will collaborate with foundries, perform hands-on characterization, analyze data, and help advance photonic products across communications, sensing, defense, and quantum applications.