Senior Packaging Engineer, Silicon Photonics

Job Description

Job Description

About Us:

nEye.ai, a well-funded optical switch startup, is poised to revolutionize the future of data centers. nEye’s MEMS-based silicon photonics optical circuit switches (OCS) eliminate critical bottlenecks in AI processing by enabling direct optical connections among thousands of GPUs and memory units. The company's SuperSwitch is an ultra-low power consumption, high radix, compact chip-scale design, offering hyperscale data centers enhanced performance, efficiency, and scalability.

  Job Overview:

This role is for a highly skilled and experienced Packaging Design Engineer to own bump-bond, die-attach, adhesive, and fiber-attach for our next-generation silicon photonics packaging solutions. You will be the designer of our product-critical packaging designs, ensuring high performance and exceptional reliability. You will own the details of the assembly, from the collaborative design of the electrical, optical and mechanical structures to process definition, with a focus on design for manufacture and design for reliability.

This is a hands-on technical position requiring a deep understanding of precision optical assembly. You will work closely with other packaging engineers, as well as integrated circuit (IC) design, mechanical, and reliability teams to create robust, manufacturable packaging solutions. Your expertise will be vital for pushing the boundaries of fiber-to-chip coupling efficiency, mechanical stability, and long-term product reliability. You will maintain the controlled documentation for every interface in the package — materials, surface preparations, critical process steps, thermal budgets, and the rationale for each — and defend those choices in design reviews with data. You define the design intent — geometries, materials, tolerances, and the rationale behind them — and partner with process engineers who develop the recipes and equipment settings to realize your designs in production.

Key Responsibilities

Design Ownership:

• Bond pad and bump layouts (pitch, height, collapse budget, underfill keep-outs) co-developed with ASIC and PIC designers

• Adhesive joint designs: fillet geometry, bondline thickness, cure budgets, CTE-mismatch stress analysis, outgassing constraints

• Fiber-attach designs: geometries, index-matching strategies, and structural retention features, meeting state of the art in both performance and scale.

• Tolerance stack-ups across optical, mechanical, and thermal domains, with documented alignment budgets traceable to coupling-loss targets

Manufacturing & Collaboration:

• Partner with process engineers to translate design intent into manufacturable recipes; review process development results and iterate the design when the process reveals constraints you didn't anticipate.

• Work with OSATs and contract manufacturers on DFM reviews, first-article inspection criteria, and design transfer to volume production.

• Review assembly and packaging yield data with the process and test teams; when a yield issue traces back to the design, own the redesign.

Reliability & Performance:

• Own the design margins to reliability targets (e.g., thermal cycling, damp heat, mechanical shock) and document how each design choice maps to those margins.

• Define and implement test methodologies to characterize the reliability of packaged devices under various environmental and mechanical stresses.

• Analyze reliability data to identify potential failure modes and work with design teams to implement corrective actions.

• Utilize your understanding of thermal, modal, and stress/strain principles to predict and mitigate reliability risks associated with packaging.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Optical Engineering, or a related field.

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in packaging design for optical or photonic components with demonstrated ownership of released package designs in production.

• Demonstrable experience with optical interfacing to PICs, including proficiency with active and passive alignment techniques.

• In-depth knowledge of packaging materials — including optical adhesives and epoxies — their design constraints, and their use in high-reliability applications.

• Deep knowledge of semiconductor fabrication processes and how they constrain package design.

• Proven ability to work with OSATs and contract manufacturers to design, implement, and transfer designs to volume production.

• A strong understanding of reliability engineering principles, including failure mechanisms related to packaging, and experience with relevant testing standards (e.g., Telcordia).

• Excellent problem-solving skills and a track record of driving complex technical challenges from concept to solution.

• Fluency in tolerance stack-up analysis and GD able to defend a stack-up across optical, mechanical, and thermal domains.

• Experience with CAD tools for mechanical design and packaging layouts.

Preferred Skills

• Familiarity with various waveguide technologies and their impact on packaging design.

• Experience with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software for stress, thermal, or modal simulations.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across interdisciplinary teams.

Starting salary and title will depend on, and be commensurate with, relevant industry experience, skills, training, education, market demands, and the ultimate job duties and requirements.

nEye.ai is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.