Senior Manager - Photonics Quality Engineering

Location: Alhambra, CA (Onsite)

Job Summary:

The Senior Manager, Photonics Quality Engineering will lead product quality engineering for Semtech's InP photonics portfolio — gain chips, DFB laser chips, high bandwidth Photodetectors, and related optoelectronic components  —  supporting coherent and IM-DD optical transceivers for data center and AI infrastructure applications. This role owns product-level quality from device design through customer delivery, partnering closely with fab operations, process engineering, and Semtech's product teams to ensure the combined electronic-optoelectronic-photonic chipset meets the quality and performance demands of hyperscale customers.

This leadership role is critical to our continued market leadership in high-speed optical transceiver solutions, driving quality improvements that directly impact customer satisfaction and business growth.

Responsibilities:

Quality Leadership ( 40 %)

• Own product quality strategy for the InP photonics product line — gain chips for tunable lasers used in coherent transceivers, high bandwidth Photodetectors,  and DFB laser chips for intensity-modulation direct-detection (IM-DD) links — targeting continual quality improvement activities to drive improved customer satisfaction across hyperscale and AI infrastructure customers.
• Define and manage the quality engineering approach across the product lifecycle — new product introduction (NPI), mass production, and end-of-life — for photonics products, ensuring consistency with Semtech's broader quality standards.
• Lead quality risk assessments for new photonics product launches, process transitions, and technology integration efforts (e.g., co-packaging and near-packaging optics platforms combining InP gain/laser chips with Semtech TIAs and drivers).
• Partner proactively with Business Units and Product Line Management to anticipate photonics quality requirements tied to next-generation product roadmaps.

Customer Quality & Continuous Improvement (40%)

• Drive expedient, hands-on diagnosis and resolution of customer-escalated quality issues for photonics products, ensuring resolution within defined SLA targets and maintaining transparent, professional communication with hyperscale customers throughout investigations.
• Lead root cause investigations and failure analysis for photonics field returns, partnering with device physics, process engineering, and packaging teams to close corrective actions.
• Report quality performance internally and to customers, including quality business reviews (QBRs), reliability qualification summaries, and corrective action status updates.

Process Excellence & Continuous Improvement ( 20 %)

• Partner with foundry and contract manufacturing partners supporting InP wafer fabrication to drive corrective action closure (8D/CAPA) and continuous improvement on process excursions affecting photonics product quality.
• Partner with Supplier Quality Engineering teams to lead supplier audits and qualification of new photonics material and process sources, ensuring qualification data meets internal and customer-facing quality standards.
• Serve as Quality representative on cross-functional product development teams, ensuring photonics-specific failure mechanisms are addressed in DFMEA and design qualification plans from the earliest development stages.

Travel Required: 15% to 20%

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Applied Physics, Materials Science, Optical Engineering, or related field. Master's degree is a plus.
• Solid knowledge of III-V compound semiconductor device physics, with emphasis on InP-based photonic devices — edge-emitting lasers, DFB/DBR lasers, gain chips, and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs).
• Working knowledge of InP epitaxial growth processes (MOCVD/MBE), including material quality assessment and defect management, sufficient to engage credibly with process and fab teams on quality issues.
• Solid knowledge of product engineering fundamentals for optical transceiver components, including LIV (Light-Current-Voltage), spectral performance, and optical power characterization test methodologies.
• Ability to identify and analyze semiconductor and photonic device failure mechanisms (facet damage, active region defects, grating defects, contact degradation) through structured failure analysis.
• Effective communicator with the ability to interface at all levels of the organization and directly with hyperscale customers, possessing strong written and verbal command of English.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with high-speed optical transceivers, datacenter interconnects, or coherent optical communication systems, particularly in the context of 400G/800G/1.6T/3.2T architectures.
• Experience in semiconductor or photonics manufacturing quality engineering, with direct ownership of supplier quality management, customer quality interface, or reliability qualification programs.
• Proven ability to solve complex technical problems and analyze data using statistical concepts and tools (JMP, Minitab, Python/R).
• Exposure to Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma methodologies, ideally Green/Black Belt certified.
• ISO 9001 and/or ISO 14001 Lead Auditor certification is a plus
• Familiarity with reliability standards for optical components (Telcordia GR-468, IEC standards).
• Understanding of co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-packaged optics (NPO) architectures and their quality/reliability implications for combined electronic-photonic chipsets.

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