Principal Photonics IC Design Engineer

NVIDIA•Santa Clara, CA

9d•$232,000 - $368,000

About The Position

NVIDIA's Mixed-Signal Design (MSD) Photonics team is building the next generation of co-packaged optical interconnects for advanced AI supercomputers. The Principal Photonics IC Design Engineer serves as the technical lead for a photonics integrated circuit (PIC) product, owning its lifecycle from architecture definition through production tapeout and silicon validation. The role also sets technical direction for the photonics PIC roadmap and mentors a team of photonics designers.

Requirements

PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, or a closely related field, with emphasis on integrated photonics, silicon photonics, or photonic device physics, or equivalent experience.
At least 8 years of industry experience in photonics IC design, with demonstrated progression into technical leadership roles.
Deep hands-on expertise with the Cadence design environment, including Virtuoso, PCell development, and SKILL scripting, for photonic IC layout and simulation.
A track record of production tapeouts, including personally driving PICs from design through GDS signoff on a foundry silicon photonics process.
Strong understanding of photonic device physics, including waveguides, passive and active components, ring/MZI modulators, photodetectors, and optical couplers.
Demonstrated technical leadership in setting project scope, making architecture tradeoffs, driving cross-team alignment, and delivering on schedule.

Nice To Haves

Experience with high-speed (>50 Gbaud) optical modulator or receiver PIC design for datacom/telecom applications.
Experience with DWDM PIC architectures, including MUX/DEMUX, multi-channel transceivers, and wavelength tuning.
Familiarity with co-packaged optics (CPO) system requirements and advanced packaging integration.
Experience with photonic circuit simulation and CAD tools such as Ansys Lumerical, ZeMax, Cadence, MATLAB, Python, and Verilog-A, and electromagnetic solvers such as FDTD, FDE, and EME.
Track record of publications and/or patents in silicon photonics.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end PIC product delivery, including architecture, design, layout, DRC/LVS verification, tapeout, and post-silicon validation on advanced silicon photonics platforms.
Lead cross-functional execution across photonic device, analog/mixed-signal, packaging, and systems teams.
Drive tapeout schedules, define design milestones, and resolve critical-path issues across multiple concurrent PIC programs.
Architect optical transceiver PICs integrating modulators, photodetectors, wavelength multiplexing, waveguides, and optical couplers for high-speed and/or DWDM applications.
Define and improve PIC design methodology, automation, and verification flows in Cadence and related EDA tools.
Mentor and technically guide photonics designers and set technical direction for the photonics PIC roadmap.