Principal Field Applications Engineer Contractor - Optical Connectivity

Lightelligence is a venture-backed AI hardware company founded by MIT alumni, developing cutting-edge technology and products at the forefront of photonic computing and optical connectivity. The company has raised over $200M in pursuit of solving one of today’s most complex engineering challenges. With a culture of internal mobility, opportunities abound to thrive in a variety of disciplines, this is a place for dreamers and doers to succeed.

As a Principal Field Applications Engineer, you will be responsible for supporting our customers and partners to achieve success with our optical connectivity products for use in their AI infrastructure. You will play a pivotal role in clearly identifying customer requirements and helping them with integration and deployment of our technology and products at scale. This crucial position requires a combination of deep technical knowledge, ability to communicate with multiple stakeholders effectively, excellent interpersonal skills, experience with Cloud, HPC, Enterprise, and OEM/ODM customers, and a can-do attitude toward problem solving.

This role is intended as fully remote with a preferred home base in the Bay Area of California. We're currently hiring for a contractor with the option to convert to full time in the coming months.

• Have ownership over customer, partner trials, and proof-of-concepts for our products.
• Identify customer-specific requirements as well as solve customer pain-points with our products and solutions.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, engineering, product, research, sales, business development and interact with external partners and customers to ensure the products are aligned with customer needs.

What we're looking for:

• Deep knowledge and expertise in compute and acceleration architectures with expert understanding of server, storage, GPU, memory, and accelerator appliances.
• Experience bringing up optical connectivity products in PCIe, Ethernet, and Infiniband Markets. 
• Possess a deep understanding of the optical communications market and customer needs.
• You are an influential voice on behalf of the customers and are constantly thinking about their needs and the reflection of those needs in the products we deliver.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written . 
• Strong organizational and interpersonal skills. 
• Have an entrepreneurial spirit with an open mindset and the ability to come up with outside-the-box solutions to solve customer pain points. 

Qualifications:

• BS in Electrical Engineering, MS/Ph.D preferred. 
• 10+ years of experience working with Cloud, Compute and Accelerator Appliance OEM/ODMs in designing in and qualifying PCIe/Ethernet/Infiniband/NVLink/DDR/NVMe connectivity products. 
• Experience with data center and AI infrastructure. 
• Deep knowledge of PCIe/CXL/Infiniband/Ethernet/NVLink/DDR/NVMe/AFL and related protocols. 
• Experience with firmware development in C, scripting with Python or other equivalent programming languages. 
• Understanding of simulation/modeling, schematic capture, and PCB layout tools. 

• Company subsidized health, vision, and dental benefits (after converting to full time)
• 3 weeks PTO and 1 week of paid sick leave
• 401 (k) with an employer contribution (after converting to full time)
• 10 Paid holidays
• A great place to work! 

Lightelligence is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.