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Salary: USD 167,000 - 227,000 / annual
Lightmatter is revolutionizing AI data center infrastructure through photonics technology. The company recently raised $400M in Series D funding at a $4.4B valuation and is scaling rapidly across all departments.
The Product Engineering team builds software that brings up, characterizes, and qualifies Lightmatter's photonic chips on real hardware—from bench-top development through production test on automated test equipment (ATE). This role bridges bench engineers and the broader test software team, working across multiple platforms including wafer test, hardware validation, and laser/optical test.
As a Staff Hardware Test Automation Engineer, you will:
• Learn the hardware deeply enough to make informed software architecture decisions
• Design and build test software automating device bring-up, characterization, and production test sequences across bench and ATE environments
• Develop and maintain test methods, test flows, and instrument control code; code writing and review are daily activities
• Collaborate directly with hardware and characterization engineers to translate device physics and test requirements into repeatable, working test software
• Build and maintain data logging and results pipelines ensuring test data is captured accurately and usable downstream for metric computation, yield analysis, and production handoff
• Debug complex hardware/software integration issues across the device under test, fixture, instrument, and test code to identify root causes
• Support test program releases to internal test cells and external test facilities
• Communicate daily with the team on progress and blockers; spend regular hands-on time in the lab with hardware
You will work with an internal test software framework (Java/Python-based), industry-standard ATE test method and testflow development, wafer prober integration, instrument control (optical and electrical sources, meters, sensors), embedded/firmware interfaces, and data pipelines from lab equipment to structured results.
At the Staff level, you are expected to mentor engineers, drive cross-functional technical decisions, and own test software architecture decisions for product lines and how frameworks scale across projects and teams.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• 8+ years of experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics
• Track record of owning test software architecture for a product line, including decisions on framework scalability across projects and teams
• Deep hands-on experience with ATE test method/test flow development and/or embedded test frameworks for hardware test automation
• Fluency with instrumentation automation (SCPI/VISA or equivalent) at a level where you can teach it to others
• History of mentoring engineers and driving cross-functional technical decisions with hardware, characterization, and manufacturing teams
• Ability to articulate end-to-end how you scoped, planned, implemented, and validated an automation project
• Comfortable working at the hardware/software boundary—reading and reasoning about embedded software (C/C++), controls, or firmware well enough to co-develop with the engineers who own it
PREFERRED:
• Master's/PhD with 3+ years of experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics
• Experience integrating ATE with wafer-level hardware (probers, handlers)
• Experience with photonic test instrumentation
