Photonic Component Modelling Engineer
Salience Labs · Oxford, United Kingdom · hybrid
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