Company Overview

Enablence USA components, Inc develops integrated optical products for communications, aerospace, and biochemical sensing. Its portfolio includes silicon-based photonic integrated circuits and optical sub-assemblies for network and data-centre connections.
About the role

Enablence is seeking a senior, hands-on Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) Project Engineer in Ottawa, Canada or Fremont, California to lead customer NRE (non-recurring engineering) projects and internal R&D; projects on our silica-on-silicon planar lightwave circuit (PLC) platform.

Our customers bring us difficult problems, and many of our new design ideas and performance discoveries come out of that work. In this role you will be the technical point of contact for our customers worldwide, judge what is feasible, and carry each project from first discussion through design, fabrication, test and data analysis to delivery.

You will also be heavily involved with internal R&D.;

Responsibilities

Customer and project

- Lead technical discussions with customers, including escalations from sales; translate customer requirements into chip specifications.

- Assess feasibility, estimate effort and risk, and write the technical sections and acceptance criteria of statements of work (SOWs).

- Own each NRE project from kickoff to delivery: design, tapeout, fabrication follow-up, test and final report.

- Write milestone and final reports for customers, and present results to customers, engineering and management.

- Travel to customer sites as projects require, and join calls across time zones. Working hours are flexible to accommodate this.

Design and layout

- Design PLC devices and circuits, using simulation to check designs and test ideas.





- Produce mask layout in Enablence's Python-based layout framework under Git version control; prepare and check designs for tapeout.

- Take part in design reviews across the team.

Fabrication, test and analysis

- Follow wafers through fabrication with the process team, and resolve process-related design issues.

- Define test plans, specifications and pass criteria, and work with test technicians on measurement.

- Analyze measured data and write and maintain the analysis code; relate results to design and process.

R&D; and process monitoring

- Design test structures for fab calibration and process monitoring; track their results across wafers and lots and flag process drift.

- Run internal R&D; projects, including development that grows out of NRE work.

Required qualifications

- Ph.D. in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Optics or Photonics with 5+ years of industrial integrated-photonics experience, or M.Sc. or B.Sc. with 10+ years.

- A record of taking PIC designs through fabrication and test to a delivered or released product.

- Experience with customer-facing technical work: requirements, feasibility judgements and technical negotiation.

- Solid grounding in guided-wave optics: waveguide modes, coupled-mode theory, and diffraction and Fourier optics.

- Ability to run simulations independently with at least one commercial or open-source photonics tool (RSoft, Lumerical, Optiwave, femwell or similar),



and to judge when a result can be trusted.

- Python for data analysis and automation (NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, pandas), and day-to-day use of Git.

- Optical test background: tunable lasers, power meters, optical spectrum analyzers, polarization control and fiber alignment; measuring insertion loss, PDL and spectral response.

- Understanding of measurement fundamentals: accuracy versus precision, repeatability, calibration and referencing, and uncertainty estimates.

- Willingness to learn and work within Enablence's established Python-based layout framework and design flow.

- Clear technical writing and the ability to explain results to customers, process engineers and non-specialists.

Preferred qualifications

- Silica-on-silicon PLC design experience: AWGs, star couplers, MMIs, directional and adiabatic couplers, thermo-optic devices.

- Familiarity with silica PLC processing (PECVD or APCVD deposition, lithography, etching, annealing) and its effect on device performance.

- Process-monitoring and fab-calibration test structures, and statistical process control.

- Scripted mask layout (gdspy, gdstk, KLayout scripting or similar).

- Experience writing SOWs or technical proposals and estimating NRE projects.

- Experience leading technical work through influence: design reviews, mentoring, and coordinating with fab and test.

- Exposure to silicon nitride or silicon photonics platforms.

- Linux, and building and managing Python virtual environments.

- Publications or patents in integrated optics.

Pay: $65,700.00-$135,000.00 per year

Perks:

- Dental care
- Disability insurance
- Employee stock purchase plan
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision care

Work Location: In person

📌 PIC Project Engineer (Ottawa)
🏢 Enablence USA Components
📍 Ottawa