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Lightmatter is a venture-backed photonics company that has raised $400M in Series D funding at a $4.4B valuation. The company invented Passage™, a 3D-stacked photonics engine that connects thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light for advanced AI and HPC workloads in data centers.
As Head of Chip Architecture, you will lead a multidisciplinary team of chip architects spanning photonics, digital, and analog domains. You'll define advanced chip architectures for co-packaged optics and datacenter/AI compute optical interconnect products. Your core responsibilities include guiding and mentoring your architecture team, co-optimizing SerDes, analog front ends, and optical transceivers for performance and cost efficiency, and working with engineering leadership to plan development, tapeout, and validation timelines.
You will serve as the primary technical liaison for key customers and partners, representing Lightmatter at industry conferences and in executive-level reviews. You'll drive the technical selling process by articulating competitive advantages and performance metrics to both technical and non-technical audiences. Collaboration with Product and Sales teams on next-generation photonic products is essential, as is researching emerging optical interconnect technologies and driving technology roadmaps aligned with market trends.
The role requires deep expertise in silicon photonics, high-frequency (50+ GHz) electro-optic interfaces, lasers, optical amplifiers, fiber-optic communications, and packaging/assembly. You must have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, or related field with 10+ years of relevant experience and proven team leadership. A track record of taking at least two chip architectures from concept to high-volume production is required. You'll travel approximately 30% of the time.
