Photonics Design Engineer - Computational Photonics

About Xanadu
Xanadu’s mission is to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere.

At Xanadu, we are learners, innovators, researchers, collaborators and problem solvers. We are creating something that has never been built before.  What we are doing is extremely hard, the classic moon shot. Few people in their life will be able to be a part of something like this, where if we are successful, the technologies we develop will solve some of the world’s most challenging problems, and literally change the world. And that is something to be excited about!

Your Role and Responsibilities:
The successful candidate will join the photonic integration team to evolve our simulation capabilities—one of the key enablers for developing the high-performance integrated photonic components used throughout Xanadu's fault-tolerant architecture. In this role, your day-to-day responsibility will be developing and maintaining numerical simulation tools capable of achieving ultra-high precision. By interfacing with external tool vendors and leveraging internal solvers, you will be responsible for ensuring our simulation toolset meets the accuracy demands of various photonic component types. Additionally, you will work closely with photonics designers and AI specialists to investigate the best optimization strategies for the design of photonic integrated components targeting sub-milli-dB or micro-dB insertion losses.

Basic qualifications and experience:

• PhD in Engineering, Science, or related field, or Master’s degree with 2+ years of experience in an industrial setting
• Hands-on experience developing or maintaining solvers utilizing numerical methods such as FEM, FDM, or FDTD
• Expert-level understanding on the origin of numerical errors including numerical dispersion, discretization errors, and convergence behaviors
• Proven ability to extend the functionality of open-source simulation tools or develop in-house codes for specialized simulation tasks
• Knowledge on integrated passive photonic components, including gratings, ring/racetrack resonators, directional couplers, MMIs
• Strong programming proficiency, and professional experience with version control systems such as Git
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple competing priorities

Preferred experience and qualifications:

• A proven track record of advancing numerical methods to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy, demonstrated through peer-reviewed journal publications or conference proceedings
• Experience with automatic differentiation frameworks (e.g., JAX or PyTorch) for optimization of photonic structures
• Experience with GPU programming (e.g. CUDA)

This is for a new position. Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and internal benchmarks. The base salary range is 110,000 - 140,000 CAD. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.