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