Senior/Principal Firmware Engineer - Optical Transceivers (On-site)

Polaris Electro-Optics is a rapidly growing photonics company developing breakthrough

optical interconnect technology for data centers, AI, and high-performance computing.

Their proprietary FenGlass™ platform integrates ferroelectric nematic materials into silicon

photonics, enabling faster, compact, and more energy-efficient solutions. Located in San

Diego and backed by substantial funding, Polaris is scaling to meet demand from hyperscale

customers and transceiver suppliers.

Role Summary

We are looking for a Senior or Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer to develop the control firmware and software infrastructure supporting our next-generation optical interconnect platforms and evaluation systems.

This is a hands-on role focused on MCU-based control, device configuration, telemetry, calibration support, power sequencing, hardware bring-up, and host interfaces. The engineer will work closely with mixed-signal hardware, high-speed hardware, photonics, and systems teams to bring complex electro-optical hardware to stable and repeatable operation.

Responsibilities

• Develop embedded firmware for board bring-up, device configuration, telemetry, calibration, and hardware control.
• Implement MCU-based control of ADCs, DACs, regulators, temperature sensors, MZM heaters, drivers, TIAs, and other peripheral devices.
• Own implementation and maintenance of CMIS-based module management, including state-machine behavior, configuration, telemetry, alarms, control functions, and host management interfaces.
• Develop SPI, I²C, UART, USB, GPIO, and related low-level device drivers.
• Develop calibration and initialization routines for optical and electrical hardware.
• Support MZM bias/heater calibration, monitor photodiode acquisition, driver/TIA configuration, and telemetry collection.
• Work with systems engineers to expose appropriate control and diagnostic functionality for system bring-up and automated testing.
• Debug firmware/hardware interactions in the lab.
• Develop logging, diagnostics, fault reporting, and firmware update mechanisms.
• Establish firmware release, versioning, regression-test, and CI practices to support repeatable development and qualification.
• Maintain firmware architecture, source control, documentation, and release processes.
• Support integration with higher-level test automation and system-control software.

Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• Strong embedded C/C++ experience.
• Hands-on experience with CMIS-based optical module management, including module state control, telemetry, configuration, and firmware interfaces.
• Experience with ARM Cortex-M or similar embedded processors.
• Strong understanding of SPI, I²C, UART, USB, GPIO, interrupts, timers, ADCs, DACs, and peripheral interfaces.
• Experience with board bring-up and hardware/firmware debug.
• Ability to read schematics and work directly with hardware engineers during bring-up.
• Experience implementing power sequencing, telemetry, fault handling, and device configuration.
• Comfortable working in a laboratory environment with first-generation hardware.

Preferred

• Experience with optical transceivers, photonics, datacom, or high-speed communications systems.
• Experience implementing and validating CMIS across multiple optical transceiver platforms or product generations.
• Experience developing calibration and control firmware for analog or mixed-signal hardware.
• Familiarity with Python or another scripting language for firmware test and automation.
• Experience with bootloaders, firmware update mechanisms, manufacturing tests, or field diagnostics.