May 12, 2025

Senior Photonics Engineer, Platforms Infrastructure

Senior • On-site

$147,000 - $216,000/yr

Sunnyvale, CA

Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 4 years of experience working in an advanced development technical environment, or 3 years of experience with an advanced degree.
  • Experience in photonic devices, optical components and packaging techniques.

Preferred qualifications:

  • Master's degree or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, or a related field.
  • 1 year of experience in technical leadership.
  • Experience with digital coherent optical transmission systems.
  • Knowledge of large volume high-speed optical transceiver designs and manufacturing.
  • Knowledge of high speed design of electronics and optics.

About the job

The Platforms Optics team works with networking and machine learning teams to determine the requirements, then develop and deliver state-of-the-art optical technologies and products to power Google’s data center networking and machine learning infrastructure.

As a Photonics Engineer, your responsibility is to create next-generation optical interconnect technologies for machine learning systems. You will work alongside both the optics team and the machine learning team to define and implement the optical technology roadmaps to support future-generation machine learning systems.

The ML, Systems, & Cloud AI (MSCA) organization at Google designs, implements, and manages the hardware, software, machine learning, and systems infrastructure for all Google services (Search, YouTube, etc.) and Google Cloud. Our end users are Googlers, Cloud customers and the billions of people who use Google services around the world.

We prioritize security, efficiency, and reliability across everything we do - from developing our latest TPUs to running a global network, while driving towards shaping the future of hyperscale computing. Our global impact spans software and hardware, including Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, the leading AI platform for bringing Gemini models to enterprise customers.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $147,000-$216,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

  • Design low-cost and high-speed optical transceivers for data center applications.
  • Architect optical systems to scale the performance and efficiency of machine learning systems.  
  • Identify, research, evaluate emerging photonic networking technologies.
  • Explore optical technologies for future computing systems.