Senior Optical Engineer

Senior Silicon Photonics Engineer (WDM)

💰 £70k–£90k + bonus | 📍 Leeds (onsite) | Permanent, full-time

A UK deep-tech scale-up is building programmable silicon photonic technology that performs compute directly within the data path. That cuts the cost of moving data around and opens up new capability for AI, cybersecurity and scientific workloads. It's a small, highly technical team working on genuinely hard problems, with real silicon at the end of it.

They're hiring a Senior Silicon Photonics Engineer to own the wavelength division multiplexing architecture for their multi-wavelength, high-speed photonic interconnect and compute platform. If the WDM plan is right, everything downstream works, so this is a role that shapes the product.

What we're after

✅ MSc or PhD in photonics, electronic engineering, physics or similar

✅ Silicon photonics or integrated optics design experience, with successful tapeouts

✅ Strong WDM link design, resonant devices and thermal tuning knowledge

✅ Hands-on AWG, echelle grating or comparable multiplexer design and characterisation

✅ Photonic circuit simulation, foundry PDKs and layout verification flows

✅ Bonus points: Lumerical, Cadence, Python/MATLAB, CW-WDM MSA familiarity

What's in it for you?

💡 Ownership of a core architecture, from spec to first silicon

🎯 Annual performance-based bonus

🏥 Comprehensive healthcare plan

🏦 Employer-contributed pension

🌴 Generous time off

🚀 Start-up pace, where your design decisions go straight into silicon

You'll define the wavelength plan, channel spacing and power budget. You'll then weigh up AWG against micro-ring approaches on power, yield and control complexity. From there, it's simulation across process, wavelength and temperature corners, followed by foundry-ready layouts and test structures.

You'll work closely with device, PIC, analogue front-end, layout and packaging engineers. You'll own foundry signoff for WDM functions and get stuck into first-silicon characterisation and debug.

If you've taped out photonics and would rather set the architecture than inherit it, let's talk. Apply here or drop me a message.