NVIDIA
Principal Photonics IC Design Engineer
$232K–$368K
US, CA, Santa Clara · Principal · Full-time · Posted Aug 12, 2026
- Experience
- 8+ years of industry experience in photonics IC design, with demonstrated progression into technical leadership roles.
- Education
- PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, or a closely related field with emphasis on integrated photonics, silicon photonics, or photonic device physics (or equivalent experience).
About the job
Leads end-to-end design, tapeout, and silicon validation of photonics integrated circuits for co-packaged optical interconnects and AI supercomputers.
What you'll do
- Own PIC architecture, design, layout, verification, tapeout, and post-silicon validation.
- Lead cross-functional execution, schedules, milestones, and issue resolution across PIC programs.
- Define design methodology and verification flows, and mentor designers while setting technical direction.
What they ask for
- PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, or a closely related field emphasizing integrated photonics, silicon photonics, or photonic device physics (or equivalent experience).
- Deep hands-on expertise with Cadence design environment, including Virtuoso, PCell development, and SKILL scripting.
- Production tapeout experience personally driving PICs through GDS signoff on a foundry silicon photonics process.
- Strong photonic device physics knowledge and demonstrated technical leadership.
Nice to have
- Experience designing >50 Gbaud optical modulator or receiver PICs, DWDM PIC architectures, or co-packaged optics.
- Familiarity with photonic simulation/CAD tools, electromagnetic solvers, and publications or patents in silicon photonics.
Pay
232,000 USD - 368,000 USD base salary
Tools
Cadence, Virtuoso, PCell, SKILL, Ansys Lumerical, ZeMax, MATLAB, Python
AI focus
Designs photonics ICs for optical interconnects that power AI supercomputers. NVIDIA also states that it uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative