Photonic IC Design Engineer, Design Automation & Modeling

The role

You will own the photonic design automation flow, including parametric layout generation, simulation orchestration, and automated verification. You will build tools, component libraries, and models, and take device blocks from design through lab measurement.

What you will do

• Own the team's photonic design automation flow across multiple integrated photonics foundry platforms.
• Build and maintain fabrication-aware inverse design as a core engine of the flow.
• Bring agentic and AI-guided tools into the design loop.
• Own device and circuit blocks on product PICs from specification through tapeout and characterization.
• Partner with the photonics test and automation team on characterization.
• Characterize devices in the lab and on automated stations.
• Maintain pcells and compact models for the component library.
• Extend models into calibration and control for tunable PICs.
• Develop behavioral and physical models of photonic circuits, links, lasers, and gain media.
• Make the flow usable by the whole team through documentation, reviews, and mentoring.

Required qualifications

• PhD or MS in electrical engineering, optics, physics, computer science, or a related field, or a Bachelor's degree with equivalent experience.
• Built inverse design or other computational design tools that produced fabricated, measured devices on commercial integrated photonics foundry platforms.
• Strong software engineering: Python, autodiff frameworks, version control, and maintainable shared code.
• Electromagnetic simulation (FDTD, FEM, or RCWA) and hands-on lab characterization correlated to simulation.

Nice to have

• Machine learning or agentic AI applied to engineering design.
• Control systems, calibration, or system identification for tunable photonic circuits.
• Photonic layout and PDK tooling (e.g., gdsfactory, KLayout, Cadence).
• Laser or VCSEL design and modeling.
• 3D heterogeneous integration or co-packaged optics.
• Contributions to open-source electromagnetic or design tools (e.g., Meep).

Benefits

• Paid time off
• Medical/dental/vision coverage
• Life insurance
• Paid parental leave
• Many other perks

Before you apply

• Must be a U.S. person as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.15 or otherwise eligible for a federally issued export control license.

About the company

K2 is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown for missions from LEO to deep space. The company is mass-producing high-power satellite platforms and is a high-growth Series D-funded company.