Embedded Software Engineer, Lasers

Lightmatter is leading the revolution in AI data center infrastructure, enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. The company invented the world’s first 3D-stacked photonics engine, Passage™, capable of connecting thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light in extreme-scale data centers for the most advanced AI and HPC workloads.

Lightmatter raised $400 million in its Series D round, reaching a valuation of $4.4 billion. We will continue to accelerate the development of data center photonics and grow every department at Lightmatter!

If you're passionate about tackling complex challenges, making an impact, and being an expert in your craft, join our team of brilliant scientists, engineers, and accomplished industry leaders.

Lightmatter is (re)inventing the future of computing with light!

Lightmatter builds chips that enable extreme-scale artificial intelligence computing clusters. Join a multidisciplinary team to pioneer the future of computing by building the world's most advanced communications lasers. In this role you will help build the control plane and diagnostics software behind next-generation photonic interconnect products - implementing laser control and stabilization routines, the telemetry and monitoring firmware that keeps them healthy in the field, and the tooling that brings new hardware to life. You will work shoulder-to-shoulder with photonic, analog, digital, and systems engineers, own well-defined pieces of the stack end to end, and grow your depth in a domain where very few engineers have experience. Your work will be visible in every product we ship.

• Implement and tune active laser control and stabilization algorithms on embedded targets, working from architecture and control approaches defined with the cross-functional design team.

• Own delivery of well-scoped firmware components for photonic transceiver diagnostics, telemetry, and monitoring; from requirements through bring-up, test, and release.

• Contribute to control plane and diagnostics architecture discussions across a multidisciplinary team of photonic, analog, digital, systems, and network engineers.

• Integrate transceiver management and telemetry with data center administration interfaces such as CMIS, OpenBMC, and DMTF standards.

• Bring up new hardware alongside hardware engineers, and debug embedded systems using GDB, JTAG, logic analyzers, and oscilloscopes.

• Characterize and debug laser behavior using optical test and measurement equipment, and build the automated test and data collection scripts that make that work repeatable.

• Adapt existing practices where they fit and devise new approaches where precedent is limited, working independently with review at critical checkpoints.

• Write clear documentation and share findings with engineers outside your specialty, adapting how you communicate to the audience.

• BS and 5+ years of experience, MS and 3+ years of experience, or a PhD; equivalent practical experience also considered.

• Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical field.

• Experience contributing embedded software to a product that shipped to customers, or to hardware that reached production or field deployment.

• Proficiency in C or C++, and comfort with Python for tooling, test, and analysis.

• Solid understanding of hardware-software integration, including common embedded peripherals and buses (I2C, SPI, UART, GPIO).

• Experience developing firmware in resource constrained environments; experience in both bare-metal and RTOS systems preferred. FreeRTOS, Zephyr or other modern RTOS experience preferred.

• Hands-on lab experience debugging embedded systems with GDB, JTAG, logic analyzers, or