Senior Photonics Design Engineer (Hybrid)

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. 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 work within the photonic integration team to develop cutting-edge passive and active components used throughout Xanadu's fault tolerant architecture. The candidate will take advantage of internally developed cloud simulation pipelines to effectively determine novel design strategies. Particular emphasis will be based on the execution of design of experiments (DOEs), while applying design for manufacturing (DFMs) concepts, exploring performance tradeoffs with Xanadu's 200mm and 300mm fabrication partners. They will gain experience with state-of-the-art foundry processes, while utilizing scalable analysis pipelines to make decisions and close the design loop. The candidate will need to use their deep understanding of analysis and simulation techniques to create sub milli dB loss components. 

Required Qualifications and Experience:

• Msc or PhD in Engineering, Science, or related field, with 2+ years experience in an industrial setting
• Expert-level knowledge and experience designing passive integrated optical components including the incorporation of wafer variation
• Detailed understanding of sources of loss in photonic devices and their relation to fabrication processes
• Understanding of the tradeoff between different simulation approaches including sources of error and computational resource use
• Deep experience with scripted photonic mask design
• Experience working in a collaborative team-based development environment, preferably using version control systems such as git
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple competing priorities

Preferred Qualifications and Experience:

• Expert-level knowledge and experience in designing active integrated optical components such as pockel’s effect based phase shifters, or III-V photodiodes
• Experience in developing components and performing tapeouts with photonic foundries.
• Understanding of the concepts of “Design of Experiments” and “Design Centering” applied to wafer level photonic components
• Experience developing automated optimization approaches, such as particle swarm, bayesian and adjoint method
• Incorporation of fabrication processes effects such as lithographic rounding, OPC/bias correction and material non uniformity into component optimization
• Deep theoretical understanding of coupled mode interactions in the context of waveguides, resonators and nonlinear optics