Senior/Principal Hardware Engineer - Mixed-Signal & Control Electronics (On-site)
Job Description
About Polaris Electro-Optics
\n
Polaris Electro-Optics is a rapidly growing photonics company developing breakthrough
\n
optical interconnect technology for data centers, AI, and high-performance computing.
\n
Their proprietary FenGlass™ platform integrates ferroelectric nematic materials into silicon
\n
photonics, enabling faster, compact, and more energy-efficient solutions. Located in San
\n
Diego and backed by substantial funding, Polaris is scaling to meet demand from hyperscale
\n
customers and transceiver suppliers.
\n
\n
Role Summary
\n
We are looking for a Senior or Principal Hardware Engineer to own the mixed-signal, power, and control electronics supporting our next-generation optical interconnect platforms. This is a highly hands-on role spanning PCB design, analog monitoring and control, power architecture, data-conversion interfaces, and hardware bring-up.
\n
The engineer will work closely with high-speed hardware, firmware, photonics, packaging, and systems teams to develop robust electrical control platforms for photonic devices, drivers, TIAs, heaters, monitor photodiodes, and power-management functions.
\n
Responsibilities
\n
- \n
- Architect and design mixed-signal control PCBs for optical interconnect hardware and lab evaluation systems.
- Design multi-channel DAC-based heater and bias-control circuitry.
- Design low-noise analog readout for monitor photodiodes, RSSI, temperature, voltage, and current sensing.
- Define and implement power sequencing, local regulation, protection, telemetry hardware, and fault monitoring.
- Select ADCs, DACs, regulators, level shifters, muxes, switches, protection devices, and related components.
- Define hardware interfaces for MCUs, drivers, TIAs, sensors, and photonic devices.
- Work closely with firmware engineers to define register maps, control interfaces, sequencing requirements, and telemetry behavior.
- Bring up and debug mixed-signal boards, including analog performance, power integrity, communication buses, and device interfaces.
- Support integration of MZM drivers, TIAs, and photonic devices.
- Create schematics, layouts, test plans, bring-up procedures, and production-ready documentation.
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Qualifications
\n
- \n
- Strong experience in mixed-signal PCB design and board bring-up.
- Experience designing low-noise analog measurement and control circuitry.
- Strong knowledge of ADC/DAC interfaces, temperature sensors, power-management circuits, and low-speed digital control interfaces.
- Experience with LDOs, DC-DC converters, power sequencing, current/voltage monitoring, and protection.
- Familiarity with SPI, I²C, UART, GPIO, and related board-level interfaces.
- Strong lab skills with oscilloscopes, DMMs, power supplies, logic analyzers, and related instrumentation.
- Comfortable debugging interactions across analog, digital, power, and device-control domains.
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Preferred
\n
- \n
- Direct industry experience developing and bringing up optical transceiver modules for datacenter interconnect applications.
- Experience with photonic IC control, including MZM heaters and monitor photodiodes
- Ability to work across analog, digital, firmware, and system-level problems.
\n
\n
\n
\n