PIC Test & Characterization Engineer

Opticore Inc
Opticore Inc

Berkeley, CA, USA

Posted on Nov 5, 2026

About Opticore

Conventional chips are hitting a wall, and as AI inference demand grows, power consumption is becoming the single biggest constraint on deployment at scale.

Opticore is developing a photonic computing system that accelerates artificial intelligence workloads with exceptional speed and energy efficiency.

Responsibilities

  • •Develop and execute test and characterization plans for photonic integrated circuits and individual photonic devices
  • •Perform optical and electrical measurements of fabricated PICs and components
  • •Characterize devices including waveguides, grating couplers, modulators, photodetectors, resonators, switches, and other active/passive photonic components
  • •Build and improve automated test setups for wafer-level and packaged-device characterization
  • •Develop Python-based measurement, data acquisition, analysis, and visualization workflows
  • •Perform fiber-to-chip coupling, optical alignment, probing, and other hands-on photonic measurements
  • •Analyze device performance including optical loss, coupling efficiency, bandwidth, extinction ratio, responsivity, insertion loss, and related parameters
  • •Work closely with PIC designers to compare measured performance against simulations and design targets
  • •Support debugging, root-cause analysis, and design iterations based on experimental results
  • •Collaborate with fabrication, packaging, electrical, and systems teams to improve device and test performance
  • •Help establish repeatable characterization methodologies and test infrastructure as the technology moves toward higher-volume experimentation and production

Required Qualifications

  • •Experience testing and characterizing photonic integrated circuits or integrated optical devices
  • •Strong understanding of silicon photonics, silicon nitride photonics, or related integrated photonics platforms
  • •Hands-on experience with optical test equipment such as tunable lasers, optical power meters, OSA, VNAs, photodetectors, and optical/electrical probes
  • •Experience with fiber-to-chip coupling, optical alignment, wafer probing, or packaged photonic devices
  • •Strong Python skills for test automation, data acquisition, analysis, and visualization
  • •Experience interpreting experimental data and connecting measured device behavior to underlying photonic designs and physics
  • •Familiarity with PIC fabrication, layouts, tapeouts, PDKs, or device simulation is highly desirable
  • •Ability to work hands-on in a laboratory environment and troubleshoot complex optical/electrical test setups

Preferred Qualifications

  • •Experience with thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) or lithium-niobate photonics
  • •Experience with silicon nitride (SiN) PICs
  • •Experience with wafer-level automated testing or high-throughput photonic characterization
  • •Experience characterizing high-speed electro-optic devices
  • •Experience with Lumerical, COMSOL, or other photonic simulation tools
  • •Experience designing PIC test structures or contributing to PIC layouts
  • •Experience taking devices from design and fabrication through characterization and iteration

We're reviewing applications on a rolling basis and will reach out to shortlisted candidates.

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