Photonic Component Modelling Engineer

About Us Salience Labs is building an industry-defining approach to optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, engineered for real latency reduction and cost savings. We’re moving towards real-world deployment, and joining at this stage means genuine ownership over that next chapter, working alongside a highly technical team on one of the most consequential problems in AI infrastructure today. About the Role We’re looking for a Photonic Component Modelling Engineer to build and qualify behavioral and compact models that accurately capture the underlying device physics. Your models will be the foundation for system-level verification of systems that combine photonic and electronic components. You’ll need to understand how a component’s behavior shifts with its surrounding optical and electrical circuitry and with operating conditions. What You’ll Do Working closely with the system verification, photonic design, and photonic characterization teams, you will: - Develop and maintain models of optical primitives (modulators, switches, photodetectors, couplers, etc.) for simulation and system verification environments - Verify that models accurately represent device physics across process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) corners - Release models that pass defined QA criteria - Verify PDK component libraries so that PDK updates and process variations don’t break circuit-level simulations - Extract model parameters from lab measurements and work with characterization to correlate simulation with measurement - Build and maintain automated tooling (Python and/or MATLAB) for parameter extraction, model fitting, and regression tracking - Maintain regression suites so model and PDK changes are checked against reference data before release - Resolve model discrepancies found at system level and feed model-based design risks back to photonic design - Keep reproducible records: version-controlled models, scripts, reference data, and QA results What You Bring Required - MS/PhD (or equivalent experience) in photonics, electrical engineering, applied physics, or a related field - 3+ years of experience in photonic component design and/or simulation - Solid understanding of integrated photonic building blocks, both passive and active, and their electrical drive requirements - Strong scripting ability (Python and/or MATLAB) for model fitting, data analysis, and simulation/measurement correlation - Comfortable working in Linux and with version-controlled repositories - Strong documentation habits, including model specifications, QA reports, and traceability from reference data to released models - Clear communication and a collaborative approach across disciplines Nice to have - Experience modelling signal propagation in photonic integrated circuits - Hands-on experience with silicon photonics platforms - Experience with optical/photonic simulation tools (e.g., FDTD, mode solvers, circuit-level simulators) - Familiarity with foundry PDK-based photonic design flows - Tcl scripting