CTO - AI-native optical design platform (Paraxial)
About The Position
Paraxial is building the first AI-native optical design platform, a modern successor to legacy tools like Zemax and Code V. Optical systems drive AR/VR, LiDAR, robotics, aerospace, and biomedical imaging - yet the tools used to design them are outdated, slow, and fundamentally incompatible with modern compute and AI. We're rebuilding the stack from first principles: natural-language spec-to-model, high-performance ray tracing, intelligent design exploration, hybrid AI tolerancing, and CAD-native integration. With hundreds of optical engineers already on the waitlist and enterprise design partners ready to begin pilots, we're hiring a CTO to architect and ship the beginning of the platform. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will build the first working iteration of Paraxial, make the architectural decisions that define its long-term future, and grow the engineering organization around your technical vision.
Requirements
- You are a senior/principal-level engineer with deep experience building zero-to-one products in technically complex domains. You have strong command over:
- System design across backend, compute, and data layers
- Building and shipping simulation-heavy or data-intensive workflows
- Working with performance-sensitive code, whether in C++, Python, or another modern language
- Choosing and integrating the right technology (C++, Python, CUDA, GPU libraries, ML frameworks, rendering engines, etc.) based on constraints
- Architecting pipelines that involve optimization, numerical analysis, or scientific computation
- Writing pragmatic, reliable code while moving quickly
- Ability to independently deliver a working product slice in weeks, not quarters
- Strong intuition for glueing together APIs, LLMs, numerical code, and UI
- Clear communication with non-software domain experts
- Bias toward shipping, learning, and iterating
- Comfort owning ambiguous, open-ended problem spaces
Nice To Haves
- Experience with simulation, rendering, robotics, AV, computational physics, or optimization
- Exposure to ray tracing, geometric optics, or optical system design
- Experience working in AR/VR, imaging, or any hardware-adjacent industry
Responsibilities
- The end-to-end architecture of Paraxial's early product
- Technical decisions across backend, orchestration, data modeling, optimization workflows, and early simulation integration
- Rapid prototyping of core workflows (spec → model → optimization → results)
- Interfaces to external engines (ZOS-API or alternatives) and, eventually, modernized high-performance cores
- Early LLM integration workflows
- Development of reproducibility, logging, and correctness foundations
- Engineering culture, documentation, and hiring the first technical team
- Long-term decisions on HPC, GPU, ML, and CAD infrastructure - selecting the right tools for the job rather than adhering to a specific stack
Benefits
- Build the foundational technical architecture of a next-generation engineering platform
- Work at the intersection of physics, AI, simulation, and human creativity
- Direct exposure to real optical engineers shaping the future of hardware
- The opportunity to reinvent an entire industry's core tools
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Industry
Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
11-50 employees
