Principal System Engineer

Avicena is a privately held company developing microLED based ultra-low power high bandwidth interconnects for chip-to-chip communications.  This technology will revolutionize High-Performance (HPC) and Cloud computing, as well as other industries where low power interconnects are critical like camera sensors, autonomous vehicles, and aerospace. Avicena is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with a development center in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company was founded in 2019 by leading technologists from the optical networking industry with a track record of delivering breakthrough products.  (www.avicena.tech)   

Responsibilities:

• Lead a team of engineers to characterize optical transmitters, optical receivers and link performance of highly parallel opto-electronic interfaces

• Develop and maintain optical transmission system testing bed for full characterization of optical components and modules as well as system performance measurements

• Define and run link DOEs using uLED on ASIC transmitters, fiber bundle as transmission and PD on ASIC as receivers

• Characterize various aspects of both existing and potential future optical components such as evaluating signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), receiver sensitivity, bit-error-rate (BER), crosstalk, power consumptions and link budget of the transmission system

• Work with PCBA design engineers to design, fabricate and bring up test boards. Experience in schematic capture, circuit simulation and PCB design guidance

Desired Qualifications and Experience:

• MS or PhD in electrical engineering or physics with 6+ years of experience

• Expertise with optical transceiver circuits such as Trans-impedance Amplifier (TIA), laser/led drivers and photodetectors

• Familiarity with datacenter class optical module designs for Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable (QSFP)/(OSFP) form factor pluggable modules or emerging Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) or Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) approaches.

• Experience with optical transceiver test methodologies

• Familiarity with industry standards including IEEE Ethernet standards, OIF standards and MSAs

Preferred:

• Ability to work cross-functionally with ASIC, packaging and optical design teams and provide clear technical inputs
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, and ability to articulate and engage with both technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels

• Ability to code scripts in python for validation and data analysis 

• Working knowledge of high-speed test instruments such as VNAs, sampling and real time oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers

• Hands-on lab experience especially with probed/free space coupled (using stages) optical systems