Senior/Principal Firmware Engineer - Optical Transceivers (On-site)
Job Description
About Polaris Electro-Optics\n
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Polaris Electro-Optics is a rapidly growing photonics company developing breakthrough
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optical interconnect technology for data centers, AI, and high-performance computing.
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Their proprietary FenGlass™ platform integrates ferroelectric nematic materials into silicon
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photonics, enabling faster, compact, and more energy-efficient solutions. Located in San
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Diego and backed by substantial funding, Polaris is scaling to meet demand from hyperscale
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customers and transceiver suppliers.
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Role Summary
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We are looking for a Senior or Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer to develop the control firmware and software infrastructure supporting our next-generation optical interconnect platforms and evaluation systems.
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This is a hands-on role focused on MCU-based control, device configuration, telemetry, calibration support, power sequencing, hardware bring-up, and host interfaces. The engineer will work closely with mixed-signal hardware, high-speed hardware, photonics, and systems teams to bring complex electro-optical hardware to stable and repeatable operation.
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Responsibilities
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- Develop embedded firmware for board bring-up, device configuration, telemetry, calibration, and hardware control.
- Implement MCU-based control of ADCs, DACs, regulators, temperature sensors, MZM heaters, drivers, TIAs, and other peripheral devices.
- Own implementation and maintenance of CMIS-based module management, including state-machine behavior, configuration, telemetry, alarms, control functions, and host management interfaces.
- Develop SPI, I²C, UART, USB, GPIO, and related low-level device drivers.
- Develop calibration and initialization routines for optical and electrical hardware.
- Support MZM bias/heater calibration, monitor photodiode acquisition, driver/TIA configuration, and telemetry collection.
- Work with systems engineers to expose appropriate control and diagnostic functionality for system bring-up and automated testing.
- Debug firmware/hardware interactions in the lab.
- Develop logging, diagnostics, fault reporting, and firmware update mechanisms.
- Establish firmware release, versioning, regression-test, and CI practices to support repeatable development and qualification.
- Maintain firmware architecture, source control, documentation, and release processes.
- Support integration with higher-level test automation and system-control software.
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Qualifications
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- B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
- Strong embedded C/C++ experience.
- Hands-on experience with CMIS-based optical module management, including module state control, telemetry, configuration, and firmware interfaces.
- Experience with ARM Cortex-M or similar embedded processors.
- Strong understanding of SPI, I²C, UART, USB, GPIO, interrupts, timers, ADCs, DACs, and peripheral interfaces.
- Experience with board bring-up and hardware/firmware debug.
- Ability to read schematics and work directly with hardware engineers during bring-up.
- Experience implementing power sequencing, telemetry, fault handling, and device configuration.
- Comfortable working in a laboratory environment with first-generation hardware.
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Preferred
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- Experience with optical transceivers, photonics, datacom, or high-speed communications systems.
- Experience implementing and validating CMIS across multiple optical transceiver platforms or product generations.
- Experience developing calibration and control firmware for analog or mixed-signal hardware.
- Familiarity with Python or another scripting language for firmware test and automation.
- Experience with bootloaders, firmware update mechanisms, manufacturing tests, or field diagnostics.
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