Senior Photonics Design Engineer

The Role

The company is seeking a Senior Photonics Design Engineer to lead the design, optimisation and scaling of passive and active integrated photonic components.

You will use advanced simulation tools and automated design workflows to develop high-performance components, working closely with fabrication, tooling and test teams to optimise performance, account for manufacturing variation and improve wafer-level yields. The role spans the full development cycle, from initial design and simulation through tapeout, characterisation and high-volume production.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and optimise passive and active integrated photonic components, targeting exceptionally low optical losses.

• Develop scripted photonic mask designs, layouts and reusable component libraries.

• Execute multiple tapeouts, analysing results and refining designs based on fabrication and test data.

• Account for process variation and fabrication effects within component design and optimisation workflows.

• Collaborate with fabrication, tooling and test teams to manage performance, manufacturability and scalability trade-offs.

• Apply statistical analysis, design of experiments (DOE) and data-driven optimisation to improve component performance.

• Develop automated simulation and optimisation workflows to accelerate design iterations.

• Contribute to design rule checking (DRC), layout-versus-schematic (LVS) and mask preparation methodologies.

Essential Requirements

• MSc or PhD in Engineering, Physics, Photonics or a related discipline, with at least 2 years of industrial experience.

• Extensive experience designing passive integrated optical components, including consideration of wafer-level variation.

• Strong understanding of optical loss mechanisms and their relationship to fabrication processes.

• Knowledge of photonic simulation techniques, including their accuracy, limitations and computational requirements.

• Significant experience with scripted photonic mask design and layout.

• Participation in at least five tapeouts involving design, layout and post-fabrication analysis.

• Experience working collaboratively across multidisciplinary engineering teams.

• Familiarity with version control systems such as Git.

Desirable Experience

• Design of active integrated photonic components, including electro-optic phase shifters or III-V photodiodes.

• Strong theoretical understanding of coupled-mode interactions in waveguides, resonators and nonlinear optical systems.

• Experience working with photonic foundries and developing reusable, version-controlled component libraries.

• Application of DOE and design centering to wafer-level component optimisation.

• Statistical analysis of wafer-level data using tools such as JMP.

• Automated optimisation techniques, including Bayesian optimisation, particle swarm optimisation or adjoint methods.

• Modelling fabrication effects such as lithographic rounding, optical proximity correction (OPC), bias correction and material non-uniformity.

• Development of DRC and LVS scripts, custom filler patterns and mask data preparation workflows.

• Electro-optic co-design of active photonic devices with electronic components, including TIAs and electrical drivers.

Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.

Oliver Logan