Senior Silicon Photonics: SOA & Active Devices Designer

Voya Energy; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Catered lunch daily at HQ

Flexible schedule

Job summary

Voyant Photonics in New York, NY, seeks a Senior Photonics Design Engineer to own the development of active and passive silicon photonic components. You will design, simulate, and validate SOAs, switches, modulators, and detectors, advancing III-V/Si integration and robust device layouts.

You will work with a multidisciplinary team in a fast-paced startup environment, driving tapeouts and optimizing performance across multiple bands and fabrication processes.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, Photonics, or a related field with 2+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong background in silicon photonic component design, with expertise in active devices, III-V/Si integration, and Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) physics and simulation.
• Demonstrated experience designing integrated photonic devices and bringing designs through silicon photonics foundry tapeouts.
• Solid understanding of waveguide optics, photonic device physics, and semiconductor fabrication processes.
• Proficiency with photonic simulation tools such as Ansys Lumerical, Tidy3D, COMSOL, or equivalent.
• Ability to analyze experimental characterization data and translate results into design improvements.

Responsibilities

• Design, simulate, and optimize active and passive silicon photonic components, with a focus on Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs), optical switches, modulators, and photodetectors.
• Develop innovative SOA and active device designs to enhance optical performance, optimizing small-signal gain, saturation power, noise figure, bandwidth, and fabrication tolerances.
• Perform electromagnetic, thermal, and multiphysics simulations to model carrier dynamics, heat dissipation, and nonlinearities across active waveguide geometries.
• Design component layouts and dedicated test structures for III-V/Si heterogeneous integration, collaborating with layout engineers to ensure robust thermal management and electrical contact routing.
• Drive component development through foundry tapeouts, including design reviews, verification, and coordination with manufacturing partners.
• Analyze optical characterization data and wafer-level measurements to validate designs and guide improvements.
• Collaborate with system-level PIC designers to translate system requirements into component specifications.
• Work with foundry partners to understand process capabilities and develop robust, manufacturable designs.

Skills

Silicon photonic design

Active devices

III-V/Si integration

SOA physics

Waveguide optics

Problem solving

Education

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, Photonics, or related field

Tools

Ansys Lumerical

Tidy3D

COMSOL

Python

MATLAB

Job description

Voyant Photonics in New York, NY, seeks a Senior Photonics Design Engineer to own the development of active and passive silicon photonic components. You will design, simulate, and validate SOAs, switches, modulators, and detectors, advancing III-V/Si integration and robust device layouts.

You will work with a multidisciplinary team in a fast-paced startup environment, driving tapeouts and optimizing performance across multiple bands and fabrication processes.