Principal Scientist

Photonic chips are faster and more energy-efficient than electronic chips. SMART Photonics Eindhoven.

At SMART Photonics we are reshaping the world of Photonics. We are an Indium Phosphide foundry specialized in Photonic Integrated Circuits. Our technology allows to uniquely combine semiconductor lasers and amplifiers, detectors, and high-speed modulators, to create state-of-the-art solutions, helping to solve major societal challenges, ranging from communication, automotive LiDAR to medical applications

If you are interested to be responsible for pioneering new integration approaches to enable novel applications for our photonics integrated circuits, this role is perfect for you.

Your responsibility:

• Become a team member of our Technology Competence Centre, offering unique and exceptional expertise in Photonics Integration. Situated under the CTO office, dedicated to ensuring the technological integrity of our development work and giving direction to the R&D program.
• Device/laser physics key competence owner. Strengthen the R&D team with device physics knowledge and act as an educator for the broader company.
• Collaborating closely with cross sectorial departments across the company to foster synergy and coherence in technological advancements.
• Playing a role in the strategic planning and execution of our technology roadmap, aligning it with business objectives and ensuring the seamless integration of innovative solutions.
• Offering technical expertise from device physics in Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and actively participating in improvement projects for the integration and process team.
• Understanding the interactions between manufacturing processes and device performance.
• Exploring the trade-offs of the existing processes and customer feedback, and propose the best solution to achieve or exceed the requirements in terms of power, design, linearity, bandwidth, etc.
• Spearheading the development of various integration technologies, notably contributing to the advancement of the high-speed integration platform (aiming at coherent optical communications).
• Support the modelling and characterisation activities to optimize and extend our Process Design Kit (PDK).
• Understand and actively acquire market requirements and able to translate this into specs for our current and future building blocks.
• Translate market requirements into a feasible Technology roadmap that allows to strengthen the capabilities of the foundry and stay ahead as leading foundry.

We are looking for a person who has / is:

• PhD degree in Integrated Photonics or similar field with focus on device physics.
• Proven tracking record on InP based active devices
• Industry experience of more than 10 years.
• Outstanding knowledge of PIC design for optical communications, LiDAR and/or sensing,
• Possess strong analytical abilities, diagnosing issues and proposing practical, effective, and innovative solutions.
• Strong communicator, self-confident, able to connect with people, win their trust and respect.
• Drive to deliver high quality and be self-critical.
• Embrace opportunities for skill development, keeping yourself abreast of the latest developments and industry best practices.
• Available to travel occasionally to international conferences, project meetings and customers.

We offer:

The unique opportunity to join our industry-leading foundry; we design it, we build it, we bring it to the market. Not only does this role add to your personal growth and development, its enables you to make impact on people’s lives and a more sustainable world.

Benefits & Culture at SMART Photonics:

Our company is in Eindhoven, in Europe, we have a team of colleagues from a diverse culture and world-wide background. We value our people and are offering support and guidance in personal growth, career development and work-life balance.

As everyone is different, we offer a wide variety of possibilities:

• When we hire a unicorn, the salary line is in line with Unicorn range in the industry.
• This is an onsite position; 25% remote / working from home optional.
  • For US based applicants, alternative hybrid options are possible.
• Investment in your career development by a tailor-made career plan (including courses, training, and personal coaching options)
• Up to 250 online courses you can follow.
• Chair massage, fruit of the office, company fitness discount and Lunch Walks.
• We are located at the High Tech Campus a bustling location offering a supermarket, all kind of restaurants, a gym, and network events such a (fe)male tech hero’s, spouse networking and a pub quiz night.
• For people who need a work permit, visa and/or relocation, we are eligible to apply for the highly skilled migrant visa. We also have a relocation package in place.
• Our employees valued teamwork with an 8.8 /10, freedom in their job with an 8.8/10 and collaboration with other colleagues an 8.6/10.

The 9 core values of SMART Photonics are: Customer obsession, Bias for Action, Teamwork Spirit, Passion to Innovate, Trust in each Other, Work SMART, Eye for quality, Ownership, and continuous improvement.