Senior Photonic Packaging Engineer

About the job

The ever growing technological advances in computing, communication, and sensing depend on photonics. PINC builds the transformative integrated photonic platform to address these needs and make that future possible. Our proprietary NanoPPLN photonic platform is based on pioneering advancements from the Nonlinear Photonics Laboratory C is an early-stage startup with venture backing from leading financial investors and major global photonics companies.

We are growing quickly and looking for passionate, highly driven, and self-disciplined individuals to join us on this journey, who are excited to push the boundaries of Photonic technologies. This is an excellent opportunity for people who excel in a fast-paced environment, approach challenges with a “can-do” mindset, and work collaboratively to inspire others while helping to build a strong team around them and with them as we scale the company together.

We are seeking a Senior Photonic Packaging Engineer to join our team and lead the development of advanced packaging solutions for PINC’s integrated photonic products.

This role is ideal for a technically rigorous, hands-on, and creative packaging engineer with deep expertise in photonic integrated circuit packaging, optical coupling, mechanical design, electrical/RF interconnects, thermal management, and reliability. You will lead the development of packaging architectures and scalable assembly processes that enable exceptional device performance, manufacturability, and customer deployment, while collaborating with external manufacturing partners to support PINC's product roadmap.

• Design and develop advanced photonic packaging solutions for PINC’s photonic integrated circuits (PICs).
• Develop package-level mechanical, optical, electrical, RF, and thermal solutions, including precision fiber attachment, chip carriers, submounts, TEC integration, wire bonding, flip-chip assembly, bonding, curing, and high-speed interconnects.
• Develop and optimize photonic packaging processes, including precision alignment, bonding, fiber attach, electrical interconnects, package sealing, inspection, metrology, and quality control.
• Collaborate with photonic design and test teams to co-optimize PIC layouts, package interfaces, manufacturability, performance, and yield.
• Perform DFM/DFA, tolerance analysis, yield optimization, and root-cause analysis to improve package performance, reliability, and manufacturability.
• Develop and execute reliability qualification plans, including environmental, mechanical, optical, and long-term lifetime testing.
• Work with external packaging vendors, contract manufacturers, and suppliers to qualify materials, assembly processes, and scalable manufacturing solutions.
• Design custom tooling, fixtures, and assembly processes to improve repeatability, throughput, and manufacturing efficiency.

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, Materials Science, Applied Physics, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of industry experience in photonic packaging, optoelectronic packaging, optical module development, advanced semiconductor packaging, or a closely related field.
• Hands-on experience packaging photonic integrated circuits, lasers, modulators, detectors, and fiber-coupled optical systems.
• Strong understanding of optical alignment, fiber attach, coupling loss budgets, polarization management, mechanical tolerancing, and package-level optical stability.
• Experience with precision assembly processes such as active alignment, passive alignment, bonding, soldering, wire bonding, die attach, fiber array attach, and optical inspection.
• Experience designing mechanical components, submounts, fixtures, and packaging assemblies using CAD tools such as Solid Works or equivalent.
• Familiarity with electrical and RF packaging.
• Understanding of thermal management for photonic and optoelectronic devices.
• Demonstrated ability to perform root-cause analysis using optical, mechanical, electrical, thermal, and process data.
• Experience developing packaging processes from early prototypes through repeatable…