About the roleYou'll own the technical customer path from defining the application requirements need to proven solution. That means capturing what customers require, defining the solutions that meet those requirements, and proving the hardware works in customer labs and in front of the industry. The role partners closely with product management, engineering, and sales - and spans three functions: applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering. You will build a team to scale this function over time.
What you'll ownApplications engineering. You'll be the primary technical interface to customers and partners, both before and after the sale. You'll lead requirements capture, architecture and interoperability discussions, and technical objection handling. You'll support evaluation platforms through bring-up and debug in customer labs, and run failure analysis on field and customer-observed issues. You'll feed requirements back into product definition and own all customer-facing technical documentation, including data sheets, app notes, and installation guides.
Solutions architecture. You'll define the complete optical interconnect solution across their electrical, optical, mechanical, thermal, and management interfaces. You'll write the hardware requirements issued to module makers, review partner designs against them (host signal integrity, power delivery, and thermal), and drive issues to closure before build. You'll own first hardware bring-up and solution validation, confirming the integrated system meets customer requirements in real operating conditions. You'll also own the qualification plan and serve as the signing authority on module qualification.
Demo engineering. You'll turn demo requirements into platform, fixturing, and instrumentation, and you'll define what each demo measures and what it can legitimately claim. You'll own demo bring-up, verify the results are real before any customer sees them, and run or support demos at customer sites and conferences.
Ideal candidate- Deep background in high-speed optical interconnect, such as pluggable or co-packaged optics, silicon photonics, or optical engines
- Systems thinking across optical, electrical, thermal, and power domains, with the ability to write clear, testable hardware requirements
- Credibility at the bench: hardware bring-up, SI/PI, validation, debug, and root-cause failure analysis
- Able to engage directly with customer system architects, defend technical positions, and write clearly
- The judgment and backbone to sign off on qualification, or to withhold sign-off
- Experience leading engineers across multiple disciplines
- 15+ years of relevant experience; BS/MS/PhD in EE, Optics, Physics, or similar
Compensation includes a base salary of $150,000-$250,000 and equity in CScale. Final offers depend on experience, market conditions and location.
