Laser Engineer

Laser Engineer

London | £75,000 – £100,000 + Equity | Relocation Support Available

An exciting opportunity to join a venture-backed, early-stage deep-tech company on a mission to redefine next-generation computing hardware. This is a chance to be the technical authority on a critical piece of deep-tech, owning the laser technology from first principles through to fabrication, and working directly with the founders from an early stage.

The package includes a salary of circa £75,000–£100,000, plus a meaningful equity stake in the company. Relocation support.

Your Role

You will lead the development of advanced semiconductor laser devices, with a particular focus on VCSEL and cavity design, taking concepts from simulation through to wafer fabrication, characterisation and product integration.

• Designing and modelling semiconductor laser cavities: DBR structures, resonance engineering, aperture design, mode control
• Running optical, electrical and thermal simulations to push performance, efficiency and reliability
• Modelling carrier transport, gain, threshold behaviour and self-heating
• Building dynamic models for modulation, switching speed, noise and energy consumption
• Hunting down and eliminating loss mechanisms across the device
• Running tolerance and yield analysis before anything goes near production
• Partnering closely with fabrication and epitaxy teams on process development
• Validating simulation against real device data: LIV, spectral, near-field, far-field, time-resolved
• Building your own simulation workflows and tools where the off-the-shelf ones fall short

What You'll Bring

• A PhD (or equivalent industry depth) in semiconductor lasers, optoelectronics or photonics
• Strong semiconductor laser design experience, ideally with VCSELs
• A track record of validating models against real-world measurement
• Fluency in tools like Lumerical, COMSOL, Sentaurus, Silvaco, PICS3D, RSoft, MEEP or in-house equivalents
• Strong Python for simulation, automation and analysis

Desirable Experience

• Oxide, proton implant or tunnel-junction confinement experience
• Polarisation dynamics, injection locking or coupled-cavity systems
• Foundry or epitaxy partner relationships
• Inverse design or ML-assisted photonic modelling
• Hands-on lab characterisation of devices you designed yourself

Why This Role

• If you decided to take this position you will have genuine ownership, with direct access and collaboration with an experienced founding team
• This is a chance to grow your expertise, your influence and your career as the company itself scales, with genuine scope to develop into a broader leadership position over time.
• Competitive salary, meaningful equity and relocation support to London

Interview process

The process begins with an initial Teams interview with Sharon at Harper Evans Recruitment, followed by a Teams interview with the founders and a final face-to-face meeting.

This role is being advertised by Harper Evans Recruitment acting as Recruitment Business.

Harper Evans Recruitment, believe that diverse teams create stronger businesses. We are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion throughout our recruitment process and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. If you require any adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. We're committed to ensuring every candidate has a fair and positive experience.